Easter Sunday

Unfinished Business

Isaiah 25:6-9
Mark: 16:1-8

What kind of Easter story is this that Mark tells? There are no alleluias, no appearances of the risen Jesus, no blessing of forgiveness for those who abandoned him at the cross. Well, there is a young man in the tomb – he might be an angel but Mark doesn’t even say that for sure. Compared to the other evangelists, to Matthew, Luke and John, this is an odd story. It doesn’t even have a proper ending. In fact, in the Greek, the last sentence is incomplete. A more literal translation would read: “and they said nothing to anyone; they were afraid, because…..” It just leaves you hanging, waiting for what comes next. The ending is abrupt, the gospel unfinished.

And if that is not strange enough, then look at the ending itself, if indeed it is an ending. It is the story of a bunch of women, terrified, running away from an empty tomb in the dawning daylight. It wasn’t the disciples who went; it wasn’t the religious officials who discovered what had happened. It was just some women -- the least important of all. Oh certainly, they had traveled around with Jesus, and some of them provided for him out of their own means, but the gospels do not name them among the twelve. In their time and place, they had little credibility, no power, and even less authority. Who would believe anything they said anyway? What business did they have bearing the message about the resurrection? No business at all …but they were the ones who went and they were the first to know that the tomb was empty.

These women were faithful from beginning to end. They walked with Jesus; they waited and watched at the cross; they came back when it was all over to offer a final act of service. It is clear that they loved him, so you can understand why they fell apart when they saw that his body was gone. We greet the news of resurrection with celebration, with lilies and music, with family gatherings and new clothes, ham and lamb and chocolate eggs. It is spring. There are buds popping out, the daylight lingers, and the world seems new again. It is a holy day, a holiday, and it feels wonderful to have an occasion of joy. But it wasn’t that way for the women who were there on the first Easter. Try for a moment to imagine what it was like, going to the grave of someone you have loved, someone who died a terrible, terrible death, going to pay your last respects and finding that the grave seemed to have been vandalized, robbed of the wounded body it contained. No wonder the women ran away in terror.

But you know, there is one thing Mark got wrong in this gospel. He records that they told no one, and obviously that is not true. Here we are, after all, and if we don’t know this story first-hand from the women, we do have it handed down from those they finally told. Their fears and their tears and their silence gave way at some point to courage and proclamation. Who knows why or how or when – it just did. Maybe it was a new reality setting in. Maybe it was recovering from the initial shock. Maybe it was remembering that everything was happening just the way he had said. Maybe it was realizing that everything was changed.

However it happened, these women who had no business carrying such earth-shattering, death-defying news, were the ones commissioned to bear the message. And the message was that Jesus was not in the tomb anymore, that they were all to return to Galilee, and that somehow he was going ahead of them and they would see him there. Now if I had heard that, I wouldn’t know what to say or do either.

The crucifixion seemed to be an ending – maybe the end -- and it was not. The women fleeing the tomb seemed to be an ending and it was not, either. And death had always seemed to be the ultimate ending and even that wasn’t true anymore. Somehow Jesus was alive and let loose in the world. They would not find him in the tomb as they expected. Instead he was going back where it all started, back to Galilee, back to the beginning. And they were to follow him there. Galilee was home; it was where they lived their everyday lives; and that was where they were supposed to go now. That was where they would see him again.

That was the message to the women on the first Easter – and it is the message to us on this Easter, too. He is going ahead and we are to follow. We will find him in our Galilee, in the place where we live our everyday lives – not at the cross, not at the tomb, not limited to Sunday morning at church. We will see him where he lives – in the world. We will see him where we live. And it will be as the poet said: “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” (T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding) Know the place for the first time, know ourselves for the first time, and know Jesus for all time.

But if we are going to follow Jesus into our daily lives, if we are going to see Jesus everyday where we live, then how we live will be completely changed. And maybe it is a natural response to want to run away from this message, to be afraid, to keep silent because speaking about what has happened will mean that it is really true. We will have to live out God’s vision for the world as told by Isaiah. We will have to work with Christ to make a feast for all people; as Jesus fed the multitudes, so must we. We will have to stand with God in trust and faith and belief as God destroys death. We will have to work to remove the shroud of war that we have spread over the nations. We will need to bring healing and hope to the poor and the abandoned, comfort and care to the grieving. We will be called to wipe away the tears of our weeping world. We will have to live in a world that seems hell-bent on its own destruction, and to do that in the sure and certain knowledge that the One we have waited for to save us, to save everything, is with us.

Is this more than you want to do, more than you think you can do? Does it make you feel overwhelmed, terrified, like running away? Now you know, maybe, how the women felt. And what business do we have anyway, thinking that we can change the world? No business at all, except resurrection business. And that means that nothing is business as usual anymore. As one teacher says: “Business as usual is no longer safe because Jesus goes ahead of us to call us to discipleship again and again. The resurrection is not a onetime event in the past, but the promise of more surprising, disturbing encounters to come. The resurrection is not primarily about empty tombs, but about the living Christ who continues to encounter us in the world and call us to discipleship.” (The Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday’s Texts, ed. Roger E. Van Harn, p 284)

Because of Easter, business as usual has given way to unfinished business. The gospel is not done. Jesus is not dead. God has not given up on the world. And our business is to tell this good news, to tell it with our own lives – to tell it with our words, our actions, our service, our love.

Find your voice, let go of your fear, follow the risen Christ back into your own life. That is where he is waiting for you. And remember the promise, given to the women and now given to us: “He is going ahead of you… you will see him, just as he told you.”

Alleluia! Christ is risen! And that is just the beginning.



(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Children, Church, and Joy

Last week, in chapel, a little boy I know was sitting across the aisle with his mother. He is about three years old and has been in worship his whole life. From his infancy, his mother has carried him in her arms to communion, held him while she sang, and encouraged him to greet people in surrounding pews. Church is a comfortable place for him.

At the worship service last week, he stood on a chair so he could see his friend preaching; he looked at the bulletin; he snuggled with his mother; and he went with her to the Table. At the end of the service, the choir sang a beautiful spiritual, music that was lively, joyful, and hopeful. And my young friend smiled and began clapping his little hand against his mother’s. Then he hopped down from his chair so he could stamp his feet with the music and dance around. It was a holy moment, filled with love and joy and a full response to the Word sung out in the chapel. Those of us who saw smiled. But we did not dance around and stamp our feet – and that was our loss.

J. Barrie Shepherd writes, in one of his Lenten reflections:

Rejoicing has long been problem for Christians of the mainstream variety. Ask us to educate, legislate, officiate, even to ameliorate, and we respond quite well; but rejoicing doesn’t seem to be our thing. Add to all this the reality of Lent – and the call [to rejoice in one of the lectionary texts] seems out of place. … Jesus was accused because he refused to suppress his clear delight in the people and things of creation. He set his life against all who turned religion into a list of crushing duties, obligations, rules that squeezed the juice from life like a steamroller crushing an orange. Why has Christ’s church since then deserted the poor orange and hopped aboard the steamroller? (A Pilgrim’s Way: Meditations for Lent and Easter, page 26-27)

Maybe it is how we think of joy – as the same as happiness. And in these troubled times, there is not a lot to be happy about, and therefore, joy must also be in short supply. But joy and happiness are not the same. Happiness floats on the surface of our lives. It is easily disturbed, even destroyed, by the storms of life, the rough seas that threaten to overwhelm us. But joy lies deep down, far beneath the surface. No matter what is happening, joy remains constant. The challenge is not to create the joy or even to “feel” it. It is only to remember that it is always there, and then to live out of that place where joy – and God – dwell.

If you were able to ask churches for a one-word description of their worship service, I wonder how many would respond with joy? And I also wonder how many of those serious steamroller churches intentionally welcome little children, teach them about worship by letting them experience it, and learn joy and spontaneity from them? Not very many, I’m afraid.

Transfiguration Sunday

Seeing the Light

When we look at the events of these scriptures through modern eyes, it is hard to know what to make of them: Elisha watching and seeing the prophet taken up to heaven; Jesus on the mountain with his friends suddenly glowing with an unearthly light.


The stories seem, well, like stories, something unreal, unbelievable. But maybe the best word to describe them is mysterious.

It is that thick veil of mystery that makes it difficult for us to see and understand, and at the same time the mystery is so much a part of what is happening that it is impossible to extract it. This is hard for us because we are not people who sit easily in the presence of mystery. We would rather be confronted with a problem that can be solved, a situation that can be fixed, a challenge that can be overcome. But the holy mystery that permeates these stories is not something that we can ever completely figure out. And take comfort, if you will: those who were there and saw it had a hard time with it, too.

The great prophet Elijah has come to the end. He is preparing to leave this life, but his companion and pupil in prophecy, Elisha, will not let him go without getting a blessing. When all the others have abandoned the dying Elijah, Elisha continues to follow him, keeping watch over him and making one last request – for a double share of the spirit that has been upon his mentor. Elijah tells him to keep watching because if he sees Elijah being taken up to heaven, what he has asked will be granted. Elisha does not turn away from the chariots of fire; he does not turn away from that which is beyond comprehension. And in the midst of wind and flame, he sees Elijah carried into heaven. It is an amazing transformation.

But just as amazing is the transformation that happens to Elisha. In his following, his focusing, and his faithfulness he receives a new identify. He takes up the mantle of his predecessor, and clothed like him, he becomes like him. It is a transformation no less powerful, no less mysterious, than Elijah being carried up to heaven. What Elisha sees gives him a whole new sense of his own calling, a new understanding of the power of the holy that is his to use in the world.

There is also a mystical transformation on the mountaintop with Jesus and his three friends. It was his practice to find a deserted place where he could be undisturbed by the crowds, where he could commune with God, where he could pray. And up there in the high thin air, the power of his praying wraps around all of them so that they are enfolded in his vision, and they see him as never before. All their defenses are stripped away; all the barriers that blind them to the presence of the holy are destroyed. They see him with the eyes of their hearts, as he really is, and it is overwhelming, so powerful and other that it is terrifying. They experience what the ancients called the fear of the Lord, fear that it is the beginning of wisdom. They begin to know him as he is; they begin to see him as he is.

But they don’t seem to know what to do with this new wisdom. Peter’s immediate reaction is to want to build three little shelters to house the holy men, to contain them on the mountain, but that is not to be. They have had a mountaintop experience, to be sure, but it will not be limited to a lofty, lonely place. Jesus, the one whom God claims as beloved, the one who now embodies both law and prophecy, does not stay on the mountain. He returns to the valley where there is suffering and sorrow, pain and sickness, exclusion and isolation, broken hearts and broken lives. And the disciples follow, focusing on him and who he is and beginning to see the light, starting to understand what it means to be faithful. Through some miracle, some mystery, on the mountain, they have seen him as he really is and it will change the way they see everything else.

And because he is one of them, they see how they, too, are made in the image of God, bearing in their lives somehow that same holy power. They see this power in him and in themselves, and they see how he uses it in the world ,and they understand perhaps for the first time their own calling: not to build monuments on the mountaintop but to pray and to preach and to practice healing, down in the valley where the people are. The disciples are called to follow, to stay focused on the source of their power, on God, and to act with radical faithfulness.

But there were only three disciples up on that mountain, only three who saw what happened to Jesus. What about the rest of them, the other nine? And what about all the others who have come after them? What about us? We haven’t seen him face to face either.

Or maybe we have and we just didn’t know it. Because we are made in the image of God, and that means that something of the presence of the holy is in us. And if the image of God is in us, then it is also in every other human being.

Part of the transformation that happens when we are enfolded in the power of Jesus is that we see ourselves as we really are, and not only that, but we see others as they are, too. Not altogether perfect, any of us, but not altogether imperfect either. Instead we are finite creatures, vessels of clay as the apostle Paul says, bearing the glory of God.

To see the light, to see ourselves and each other clearly and truly – warts and all -- is a necessary part of transformation. But it is not all that easy to do. We can put a lot of effort into trying to convince others -- and ourselves – that we are good and perfect and right. We often look for someone else to blame when we are at fault. We expend a great deal of energy denying our need for forgiveness. It is a paradox that we have to see our own brokenness in order to comprehend the potential of our own holiness.

The light that shines through Jesus on the mountaintop illuminates our own lives as they really are, and is somehow also reflected in them – in our lives and the lives of others – those like us and unlike us. The holy is present all around, if only we could see.

The writer Madeline L’Engle (in The Irrational Season) describes the mountaintop transformation this way:

Suddenly they saw him the way he was,
the way he really was all the time,
although they had never seen it before –
the glory which blinds the everyday eye and so becomes invisible.
This is how he was:
radiant, brilliant, carrying joy like a flaming sun in his hands.
This is the way he was, is,
from the beginning and we cannot bear it.
So he manned himself, became manifest to us,
and there on the mountain they saw him,
really saw him, saw his light.
We all know that if we really see him we die.
But isn’t that what is required of us?
Then perhaps we will see each other too.

And here is the heart of the mystery: when we see Christ, we will see each other – and we must see, really see, each other in order to see Christ. And then, when we see the light, we are changed, a transformation as irrevocable as death. We take a long loving look at the real. We see the world as it really is, and as God intends it to be, and we act in faithfulness to realize God’s vision. And the light of the world shines on us and in us and through us, and nothing looks quite the same ever again.

A story is told about two of the ancient desert fathers:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Father, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” The old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “Why not become all flame?”

This is what it is to see the light. It is to know that the one who is the light of the world burns bright within us. It is to know Christ as Christ really is, and to find our own selves transformed by that wisdom. It is to bear the light into the world. It is to become all flame.

May it be so.






(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Not the same

It was snowing this morning and my street was not plowed. I suppose I could have been slightly heroic and gotten myself to church, but I decided to stay home. Instead, I worshiped at the "church of the internet" -- live streaming video from a famous church. It was a lovely service, carefully choreographed, with guest musicians, a large choir, and an intellectually-leaning sermon. It was nice -- and better than nothing, I suppose -- but somehow it wasn't quite church.
And this leads me to think some about what is church and, related, what is worship. For me, it is a physical experience, being in the same space with others engaged in the same actions. It is the sounds, smells, warmness or chill of the air, touch of the bulletin and hymnal, presence of others nearby in the pew standing and sitting, breathing and coughing and whispering. So for an experience to be church for me, it is incarnational. And it is also communal. There is something about the gathered body that is essential. One alone can pray and worship, too, but one alone is not church. Church is where I meet others on the same path but with their own journeys; where I share their burdens and hand over mine to them and to God; where I turn my attention from my own self to others and to the world; where I can see God in the world in those made in the image of God. I can pray and sing when I am by myself and that is necessary and important, and it is praise and good. But for an experience to be church and worship for me, it needs to be with others, all of us gathered by the Holy Spirit to meet God and live into the calling of Christ.
I hope it doesn't snow next Sunday...

The Art of the Spirit

There are moments in worship where something indefinable somehow breaks open and you find yourself in a whole new space. That happened to me yesterday. My friend and I, both now “churchless,” were in chapel, and it was a really lovely service. The music was amazing; the preaching was good; there were warm welcomes and sweet blessings. And then – all of a sudden – we were in a new landscape. In ways too mysterious even to consider, there was an unexpected public affirmation of a ministry that had seemed now to be on hold, and the gathered community was shown a new understanding of art and spirit.

It was a carefully planned service, with every detail scripted out, I’m sure. But there are some things that transcend planning, and it was that part of our worship that brought tears and joy and the sharp mixture of regret at what has been lost combined with gratitude for what remains. In other words, the Spirit works in ways we do not control and when we least expect it, and we are bowed low with wonder and awe in Her presence. And so it was for me yesterday. Thank God!

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sacrifice or Offering?

Genesis 2:1-14
Matthew 10:37-42

The story of Abraham raises a hundred questions for me, and I do not have the answers to any of them. It isn’t so much that it is hard to understand what happens; the difficulty I have is understanding why. Why would a father be willing to sacrifice the son he has been waiting for his whole life? Why would he go without question to a distant mountain, take the time to build an altar – not an easy or short task – presumably have his son help him with that job, and then prepare to offer that same son as a burnt offering? Why?

And I have to wonder about Isaac, too -- Isaac who asks the single question: Where is the lamb for the sacrifice? – and then is not heard to speak again in this story and very little in the rest of the record of scripture. It is as though the implicit answer to his question, that he is the lamb, shocks him into silence. I don’t understand why he didn’t try to run, why he didn’t resist, why he didn’t argue, why he didn’t try to save his own life.

That the story is told in such a flat, factual, and unemotional tone is even more horrifying. “When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son.” (Genesis 22:9-10) I want to know what lies behind these words that are presented in a manner so straight-forward and matter-of- fact, but are so unbelievably terrible. Did Isaac struggle? Did Abraham try to explain himself? Did he weep? Were his hands shaking? Was his soul screaming in protest even as his body carried out what he thought God was commanding? The story is silent.

Biblical scholars and others have worked for centuries to understand and rationalize the story. But in the end, what we are left with is a father raising a knife over his bound child. If this is the definition of the kind of sacrifice that God requires, I am not interested. It is asking too much, more than I am willing even to contemplate.

And the larger set of questions has to do, not with why Abraham did what he did, but rather why God did what God did. Why did God test Abraham in this way? It seems too hard, not the kind of God I want in my life. So I have been thinking about what it is that God requires of us in light of the story about God and Abraham – doing my own rationalizing, I suppose. What kind of sacrifice does God demand of us?

The dictionary defines sacrifice as “the act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy.” That’s a fine definition, I suppose, but I don’t think it goes quite far enough. To me, sacrifice implies something involuntary. When you sacrifice, you give up something precious to you, you give up something you wish to keep, and you do it because it seems you have no other choice.


For example, parents sacrifice for their kids, right? They give up sleeping through the night, having a quiet dinner for two, taking grown-up vacations. They give up their privacy, their freedom and their money – all valuable things that certainly they might rather have for themselves if only it were possible. But to raise their children and respond to their children’s needs and pay for college and do all that, they must sacrifice. In many families, the sacrifice is done in a loving and willing way, but not always. So, to me a sacrifice has a kind of involuntary component.

A sacrifice can also be a way to prove oneself: If you really loved me you would -- fill in the blank: give up smoking, change jobs, study harder, let me have this thing that I want. You sacrifice to show your commitment, loyalty, love, devotion. You give up something because it demonstrates how much you care about something else.

That’s kind of how I think of sacrifice – involuntarily relinquishing something precious and doing it to prove a point. And it seems, on the surface, that this is exactly what God asked of Abraham: Give up the most precious thing in your life. Surrender your son, your Laughter. And do it to pass my test of faithfulness.

I confess that I cannot accept that this is how God acts. I cannot understand how an all-loving God would demand this kind of wrenching sacrifice as a test of loyalty. So I wonder if maybe what God wants from us is not sacrifice so much as offering. Is there a difference? I think there is. When I hear the word offering, I think of something given voluntarily, not coerced. I think of generosity and freedom.

But there is a kind of shadow side to offering as well. An offering is often a form of bargaining, isn’t it? You make an offer on a house, you make your best offer for a used car, companies have offerings of stock. If sacrifice implies an involuntary act, offering seems exactly the opposite – something completely voluntary, something that I decide to make available or give up, but I do it in order to get something in exchange. The location of coercion shifts. You know: Let me make you an offer you can’t refuse.

You know how this works. You say to God: “If you will just help me out of the jam, cure my friend, get me this job, whatever, I’ll go to church every Sunday, I’ll put money in the plate, I’ll read my Bible and pray every day.” We seek to shape God’s behavior, earn God’s love, by the good deeds we offer up.

And in the end, it seems to me that neither sacrifice nor offering governs the kind of relationship God is ultimately calling us to enter. That relationship must be based on an acceptance of the complete and incomprehensible sovereignty of God. For all our brilliance and ability, we can never know the mind of God. The prophet Isaiah had it right: “…My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) God is the one who tests and provides, the one who demands and delivers, the one who always acts in love, even when that love is too terrible for us to contemplate.

But where does this leave us? Do we blindly follow the kind of commands that make every fiber of our being rise up in horror and dread? Do we go through the motions with an arrogant self-confidence that God will bail us out in the end? Do we become bitter in our losses or try to bargain for what it is we think we want?

Where I come out on this is that what God desires from us is neither sacrifice not offering but rather gift. That is how God is in relationship to us, and how we are to be in relationship to God. When you come right down to it, everything we have and everything we are – everything – is a gift from God. How would it be to live your life with that same kind of holy generosity, to live as though you yourself were a gift from God and a gift to God?

It’s not as easy as it sounds, you know. "Gift" means that we give everything, freely and fully, expecting nothing in return. No coercion, no bargaining, no strings attached. For Abraham that meant being willing to sacrifice his only son Isaac, Isaac who was the living sign of God’s promise, to show that he trusted completely, not in the evidence of the promise – the child – but in the promise itself. For Jesus, it meant letting go of the knowledge of God’s presence at the end and clinging only to the hope that God might still be listening. For the disciples, it meant leaving behind home and family, giving up everything that was familiar, to follow the call of Christ, to live in and with the reality of God-with-us, Emmanuel.

And how about you? What is it that you have come to cherish because it is for you the symbol of God’s love? Are you willing to imagine giving up the symbol for the substance? What would it mean for you to live as though you were both gift and giver?

The God who has withheld nothing from us, not even God’s only son, calls us to live in radical obedience, to follow Christ, to give all that we have and all that we are – not as a sign of sacrifice or an exchange of offerings, but only as a free and faithful expression of love.

That’s all. That’s everything.

God only asks of you what you have to give, which is your life. And you have to be willing to lose your life in order to find it. You have to be willing to give your life to God as a gift in order to find the gift that God would make of you.

And may God grant all of us the grace to be this gift. Amen.



(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

An Undivided Heart

Psalm 86
Philippians 2:1-8
Matthew 10:24-39

It’s official: as of yesterday, it is summertime. You know, when the living is supposed to be easy. That may – or may not – be true in your world, but certainly here there is nothing easy about today’s gospel. Jesus says, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set son against father, daughter against mother, and when that happens, remember this: if you love your family more than you love me, then you are not worthy of me.” No, nothing easy about this. What is going on here?

Here is the context of what Jesus is saying. He has just sent his disciples out on their own. It would not have been an easy mission. There was hostility and skepticism about him and his followers. It seemed to many that he thumbed his nose at the religious establishment. He broke the rules. He hung out with the wrong kind of people and now he had gathered up a whole bunch of others who were doing the same things. They went in the power of his love and that power enabled them to do the kinds of things he did.

But he wants them to know that it will not always be this way. They will not always have success; they will not always find a welcome. If they are looking for a life of peace and ease, this will not be it. The sword that he talks of will slice through their lives, cutting out the old ways like a surgeon cuts out a cancer, even if those old ways include love and loyalty, people to whom they have grown attached. If they want to follow him, Jesus seems to say, they have to choose. They cannot follow him if their heart is divided, if their love is parceled out, a little over here for family and friends, a little over here for God. They have to decide. That is perhaps why Jesus speaks of bringing a sword. In the Greek of the day, the word we translate as “decide,” krinos, means to cut through, to separate. The sword Jesus brings is the sword of decision.

On its face, at least, the decision-making is simple, isn’t it? Just cut out loving and desiring anything that is not God. Simple to say, but it seems impossible to do. It runs counter to almost everything we have been taught to believe, doesn’t it? Certainly that bit about honor your father and mother. But we’ve also been taught to believe that we can have it all, that there are infinite possibilities and we don’t need to make any difficult choices.
It is easy in a place like this to feel entitled to that kind of freedom. But I wonder if it really is freedom. I see a lot of people who are pretty frantic with the effort of trying to have it all:

Trying to have a brilliant career and a close and loving family;
Trying to get ahead at work by putting in long hours and also maintaining a social life and an active network of friends and volunteering for worthy causes;
Trying to have all the latest gadgets and toys even if it means maxing out the credit cards;
Trying to be active in Dwight Hall, participate in a singing group, play a sport and make Phi Beta Kappa.

It doesn’t sound like freedom, does it? And Jesus’ words cut through the accumulated obligations of our lives and it is as though he says to us: none of that stuff really matters anyway. All the things you think are important are nothing. The only thing that matters is loving me. You just have to decide.

And if this was hard for his first disciples, when he stood before them, spoke with them face to face, taught them, touched them and ate with them, how much more difficult is it for a world who has not seen him in 2000 years. Plus, our lives are infinitely more complex than theirs, filled with distractions, debts, duties, to-do lists a mile long. How do we get our arms around what Jesus is telling us? How do we embrace this hard saying? Don’t get excited; I’m not going to tell you anything that will make it any easier, but I am going to try to open up a bit of the meaning of this teaching.

Do you recall Jesus being confronted by the Pharisees (Matthew 22:34-40)? They were seeking to test him and catch him in a public blasphemy that they could use to discredit his ministry and demoralize his followers. They came to him and asked him which was the greatest commandment? It was a trick question because there are many great commandments. Even if you narrowed them down, you’d probably still count at least ten. But Jesus took all of those ancient instructions and summed them up like this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your soul. This,” he said, “is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is just like it. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” In other words, all love begins with the love of God. That is to be first and foremost. But this kind of love is not disembodied. The true and wholehearted love of God is always grounded in the context of this world. If we do not love those whom we have seen, how can we love God whom we have not seen (1 John 4:19-21)? How can we love one another if we do not love our own self? And how can we truly love our self if we do not love others?

So how do we go about this, doing as Jesus teaches, loving God with our all of our heart?
Well, for one thing, we seek the strength of community. On Sunday, you know, you can stay home and read your bible, Google a sermon, and hum a hymn all by yourself, but it isn’t the same as coming here and being together, is it? We need each other. Dietrich Bonheoffer said “I need my brother to speak the word of Christ to me, because the Christ in my brother is stronger than the Christ in me.” Being a Christian is not something we can do solo. To be Christian is to be part of the body of Christ. And it is in the body, the church, with each other, that we find the strength to love as Jesus loved.

And that kind of love, loving God with a whole heart, means that we take seriously our own calling. Every Christian has one. We are all called to ministry – not just those who go to seminary and become pastors. You may not know what your calling is but God does. Have you ever heard about the practice of sealed orders? As a way of protecting the integrity and safety of a voyage, a ship’s captain would receive an envelope that was not to be opened until the ship was at sea. When the contents were revealed, then the captain would have instructions for the journey. Some people believe that each one of us has our own sealed orders, holy orders from God, and the work of our lives is to discover what they are, to come to the place where the instructions for our own journey are revealed. That revelation is the result of discernment -- prayer and listening and faithfulness. It is finding out what God means us to do, who God means us to be. It is understanding the ministry to which God would have us give our heart, our whole heart.

And, finally, in order to love as God loves, we must honor our origins. I think it is easy to forget that humankind was created in the image of God. When we remember and honor that, we start to know what it is to be Christ-like. As Paul put it: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited…” (Philippians 2:3-6).

And what exactly would it mean to have the same mind in us that was in Christ, to live out the imago Dei that is in each of us? It would mean learning to love the world as God loves. God watches over those who are so numerous as to be almost invisible, those who are lowly and worthless in the eyes of the world. God’s eye is on the sparrow, on the least and the last and the lost. And if we are to love God, then our eyes must be opened to see the preciousness of everyone, not just those who are near and dear to us. There is to be no hierarchy of love, no division within our hearts. Is this easy? No. So we come here to be together, we pray and listen for our own calling, and we remember that we are the reflection of God’s love in the world.

And we take heart in this: the God who watches over the sparrow is always watching over us, in love and tenderness and mercy and grace -- whole-heartedly watching.
And we are called to do the same: to keep our eyes on God so that we can see the world – the whole world –with the radical, inclusive love that comes forth from an undivided heart.

May it be so. Amen.




(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Trinity Sunday

The First -- and Last -- Word

Genesis 1:1 - 2:4
Psalm 8
Matthew 28:16-20

In the beginning when God began to create the world, God did that work by speaking the world into being. Have you ever noticed this?

“God said, let there be light” and there was light. “God said, let the dry land appear” and it did. “God said, let us make human kind in our own image” and man and woman came into being.

Where there was absolutely nothing, or so it seemed, there was this word from God calling forth everything, the heavens and the earth, all living beings -- you and me. What power was contained in those words!

But that was then and this is now, and whenever the beginning happened, and who really knows, it was a long time ago. And if we are honest about it, God’s ability to speak a new creation into being seems to us like a fairytale, a myth, something that might have happened once upon a time in a faraway place but just seems impossible now.
It is hard to see how God’s word still brings a new world into being. After all, the old world seems pretty entrenched. And we are awash in words, even if they aren’t from God. Billboards fly past us on the highway full of words, the radio is on, the television is on pouring words into the air around us. Our computers have made words ever present, instantaneously transmissible, plentiful and cheap.

It might be that we have minimized the impact of words by their proliferation, but I wonder. I think there is still great power in the words we speak - life-changing, life-creating power. Just consider the impact of these words:

I love you.
Congratulations, you have been admitted.
Will you marry me?
You have cancer.
You’re having twins.

In the instant those words are spoken, someone’s life is changed forever, recreated on the spot. And if there is such power in our words -- we who are human, only human -- then how much more so is there power in God’s words.

You know, we think of the Bible as the word of God and so it is. But is the Bible the record of all God has ever had to say to the world? Is this it from beginning to end, all done, so to speak? Has God fallen silent? Is the bible the last word that God spoke? I don’t think so. I think God is still speaking a powerful creative word in our world. But I think it is harder for the world to hear that word now than it was in the beginning when there was nothing. We are surrounded by distractions and noise, by conflict and war, by death and destruction, and all that makes it hard for us to hear the eternal word that still dwells among us.

The poet, T.S. Elliot, understood this dilemma:

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise
and deny the voice

(T.S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday,” The Waste Land and Other Poems.
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich: New York, 1962, p 64)

Well, we will never have enough silence, will we, and no question about it, we walk among noise. Do we also avoid the face, as Eliot says? Do we allow our rejoicing to be drowned out by the world’s noise? Do we deny the voice?

It does not have to be this way. Let me suggest one approach to hearing the word of God’s creative voice. In the Hebrew, “word” is dabar. And while dabar is usually translated as word, it also has the meaning of an action or a thing. I think that is how we can hear God in our world, through actions and things.

When someone shows us an unexpected kindness; when people reach across racial and cultural lines to offer aid and assistance; when the pain of another’s loss becomes our pain; when we pray and give and work and act on behalf of the world, all of that is the word of God. And when we take the things of the earth – bread and wine, water and oil -- and celebrate God’s presence through them, that also is God’s word.

We are surrounded by the power and presence of God’s word, but these days, that word may not be so likely to come as a clear and unmistakable voice in our ear. Instead, listen for the word in the actions of the faithful. Listen for it in sacramental love. Expect God to speak in unexpected ways, like out of the mouths of little ones. The psalmist says that it is out of the mouths of babes and infants that God builds a fortress against all that would attack our faith, our belief, our sense of the presence of God.

Think about that for a minute. When we baptize these twin boys this morning, these little babies are speaking God’s word to us. Here they are, created out of nothing, nothing except love, and it is through them that God can speak to us of love. It is their gurgling and cooing and crying and babbling that somehow can keep the enemies of God at bay. They are, after all made in the image of God -- and so are we all.

You are made in the image of God. You are God’s reflection in the world. And you are a word spoken by God. You have in you the potential to be life changing, life creating. You have the potential to bring into being the goodness that God intends for our world. You have the power to speak God’s word in the word. Claim that power and act God does: loving, creating, transforming, bringing light and life to the dark and dead places.

And here is the last word from God, or perhaps I should say the lasting word. It comes to us from Jesus, the one who is also called the Word, the eternal Logos. His last word to his disciples -- then and now -- is this: “Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Dear friends, this is the good news of the gospel. Believe it, trust it, and let your life speak it.

(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Easter 3

On the Road

Acts 2:14a; 36-41
Luke 24:13-35

It is often the case that, when a woman appears in the scripture, she is not named. Of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, one is named and the other is not. I can imagine that unnamed disciple as a woman. And I also think that because the second disciple is not named, that person might be us. Somehow we are invited into this story. Somehow we, too, are on the road. So reflect on me with this story, of how it might have been then – and how it might be even now.

-----------------------------

I hardly know where to begin to tell you this story, so I guess I’ll just start in the middle of it -- when Cleopas and I were on the road. We were going back to Emmaus, leaving Jerusalem. There was nothing for us there anymore, no reason to stay, no future really, so we were giving up, going back to the old way of life.

It had been awful, just awful. More horrible than anything I have ever seen before, or since. Jesus, crucified, dying a terrible death. I had been there with the others; I watched the whole thing. And then there was the news we had heard only that morning, from the other women who had been to his tomb. I didn’t go; I didn’t think I could bear to see his poor dead body again. But the women who went came back saying that they had seen angels, that his body was not there. For me, this was beyond belief and, quite honestly, it was like insult added to injury. First he was killed and then his body was gone.

With something so bad as all of this, you would think we would have just wanted to forget the whole thing. But it seems it is human nature to need to talk through terrible things. That’s what we were doing on the road – that long and lonely road -- talking through it, going over and over it, trying to figure it out.

We had so many questions. How could it have gone so wrong? How could the crowd have turned on him that way? Why did Judas do it? And wasn’t there something we could have done, should have done?

We walked and we talked, pouring out our grief and guilt to each other. I felt so heartbroken that I could barely pay attention to anybody else on the road. So when one of the other travelers fell in with us, I hardly even noticed. He walked alongside us, eavesdropping I suppose, because after a bit he asked us what we were discussing. Cleopas turned to him and said, “You’re coming from Jerusalem. Are you the only person who’s been in that city who hasn’t heard about the things that have happened?” Well, apparently he hadn’t.

So Cleopas and I told him all about Jesus. Seems strange now looking back on it, us telling him about Jesus, but it wasn’t strange then. We told him how Jesus was a prophet mighty in word and deed and how we had hoped, oh how we had hoped, that he would be the one to redeem Israel, to save us. We told him how our hopes were as dead as our Lord – dead and buried and gone. And we told him the unbelievable tale from our friends, that he wasn’t in the tomb anymore.

The stranger listened to us and then he said an odd thing that I didn’t really understand at the time. He told us that we were foolish. He said something about our being slow of heart. And then he began to explain to us about the Messiah, opening the scripture for us. He went all the way back to the beginning, to Moses, and then all the prophets, explaining how it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and die and then to enter into his glory.

I listened and I began to feel a flicker of hope, my heart warming a little as he talked. Maybe, just maybe, it was true. Maybe it was not over. He seemed to know, and listening to him, I could almost believe it, too.

Well, we were so intent on what he was saying that we reached our village in no time. But the stranger seemed to be traveling on, like a man with a long journey ahead of him. I couldn’t bear to see him go and we begged him to come and stay with us. He agreed and we took him home.

We were tired, worn out with grief and despair, exhausted from all the activity in Jerusalem, and it was late, but we had a guest. So we began to prepare a meal. Cleopas made a little fire, and I unpacked our bags from Jerusalem, laying out some cheese and dried fruit, a small container of wine. And then when the fire was going, I got out the flour and a little oil to make some cakes of unleavened bread. And that simple ordinary act almost overwhelmed me with grief, because I remembered being in the kitchen near that upper room and mixing the unleavened bread for another supper, the supper that turned out to be the last one. It all came flooding back to me and I think I must have salted the dough with my tears. But there was hospitality to be offered and so I set aside my feelings and brought the meal to the table.

The three of us gathered there to eat, and then the most amazing thing happened. Our guest became the host. He took the bread, the bread that I had made, and began to say the blessing: “Baruch et ta adonia elahaynu melech ha olam ha motzi lechem mean ha aretz.”

And as he broke the bread to give it to us, I saw, I knew. He was holding my bread in his ruined hands, and my eyes were opened. I remembered what he had said the last time he held my bread like that. “This is my body broken for you, do this and remember me”. I wasn’t at the table that time, I was watching from the door, but I saw, I heard, and this was no different.

It was, somehow, his own life that he was holding out to us -- blessed and broken and given away. It was true. It was the kind of thing that was impossible to believe, and at the same time impossible not to believe. It was true, he was alive, in a different way, a new way, but alive.

And I have to say, I think the same thing was true for me. In that moment I was alive in a different way. I saw him holding my bread and it was as though he had taken hold of my own life. I received his blessing. And when he held that broken bread, it was as though he laid his hands on my broken heart. His life was given to us just as the bread was, and I knew in that moment that it must be the same with us. Our lives must be given away, too. We were to become bread for a hungry world..


Well, he was gone, all too soon, but somehow our grief had vanished, too. It was late, it was dark but there was no question about what we would do. We got up and went back to Jerusalem. We found the eleven and all the rest of our companions, and they were telling similar stories, that he was alive. And we told them how he had been with us on the road, how he had opened the scripture, and how he had been known to us in the breaking of the bread.

And that’s the end of my story. But, to tell you the truth, this story doesn’t have an end. It goes on and on because he goes on and on. He is alive. And he will be made known. This is a promise. And the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far away, all whom God calls.

This is the promise:

Wherever two or three offer what they have to a stranger, he is there. Wherever broken-hearted friends seek to comfort each other, he is there. Wherever life is hopeless and the road is long and lonely and dark, he is there. Wherever the Word is opened and bread is broken and lives are shared, he is there. Wherever his friends gather around the table in faith and love, he is there.

He is alive. It is true. He is alive and he is here.

Easter!

Easter Expectations

Matthew 28:1-10

We come to Easter worship expecting the ringing of bells, the scent of lilies, the sound of brass and organ and choir, bright banners and joyful music – and we are not disappointed. It is a celebration! And it isn’t just at church. At home there might be colored eggs and chocolate bunnies and perhaps a special brunch or dinner planned for later today. It is still early in the year but spring did arrive officially on Thursday and you can feel the promise of new life – bulbs popping up, more hours of daylight, robins returning. We rejoice, and it seems that even the earth itself joins in. Our Easter is a joyful occasion and that is why we come this morning – to celebrate that joy. That is what we expect.

But in truth, Easter defies any ordinary expectations. Certainly the first Easter did. The women came to the tomb expecting it to be sealed, expecting to express their grief in the place where Jesus had been buried. They did not expect an earthquake, they did not expect the stone to be rolled away, they certainly did not expect an angel saying, “He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.”

They probably should have expected this, though, shouldn’t they? After all, as the holy messenger reminded them, Jesus himself had told them it would happen. And probably even before the angel instructed them to “Go and tell,” they were on their way -- hurrying, running, stumbling. They were terrified by what had happened and, at the same time, they were overjoyed by the possibility of what might yet be.

And then, the thing they least expected – they met Jesus himself. And his words spoke directly to their fear and their joy. “Greetings,” he said – although a more accurate translation of the Greek might be Rejoice! “Rejoice,” he said, and then he added: “Do not be afraid.”

Rather than being paralyzed by their fear, they were to go and tell. And this would be possible because he would be going ahead of them. He was sending them all to Galilee. Instead of remaining in Jerusalem where it all seemed to end, they were to go back to Galilee where it all began. They were to go there and pick up where he left off – that is what he expected of them. They were to go to the place where he taught and touched and healed, where he showed the power of God’s love, where he pushed the limits of conventional religion until it stretched so wide that everyone was included. They were to go back to Galilee and take up that same work – preaching, teaching, healing, touching, loving, including – inviting everyone into this new way of life that he had lived among them.

It would not be easy. They knew full well what had happened to him – these women who had remained at the cross, who had stood by him to the end – or at least what had seemed like the end. They must have known how hard it would be to do what he said. But there he was, right in front of them, giving them a set of new commandments, telling them what he expected of them: “Rejoice, do not be afraid. Go and tell, and I am going ahead of you.” And suddenly all of their expectations were transformed and everything was possible again. They could change the world, because he had changed everything.

Well. That was then and this is now. And how about you? What is it that you expect, really expect? Do you expect to change the world? Have you come here excepting to meet the risen Christ?

If not, take comfort that those women in Jerusalem didn’t expect that either, at least not at first. But there he was, alive somehow, and calling them into a new life, too. There he was, God’s eternal “yes” spoken to the “no” that the world tried to say at the cross.

And the world is still trying to say “no” to God’s power and life-giving love. But God will not be silenced; God is still speaking an eternal, resurrection “yes.” It is still happening, because Christ is alive! We sing it; we say it; let us believe it and live it, too.

And what would it be like to meet him these days? Where would you expect to find him? He himself has told us: he is the hungry and homeless one with no warm jacket to wear on a cold spring day; he is the one who is thirsty for love, a stranger who is lonely and far from home; he is sick or in prison and scared (Matthew 25:35-36). He still wears the face of humankind.

And just as he did then, he is sending us to Galilee, our Galilee, to the place of ministry and service. We are to engage in the same work he did – preaching, teaching, healing, touching, loving, including – inviting everyone into a new way of life.

And what he expects of us is that we embrace joy. He expects us to live without fear even in the midst of a dangerous and uncertain world. He expects us to go and tell, to speak a word of faith, to speak God’s word of “yes,” with our very lives.

That is what he expects of us, and here is what we can expect of him. Wherever we go, wherever we are called, whatever we do in faith, he has gone ahead of us and he is there, waiting to walk with us in our own discipleship.

So remember his Easter commandment: Rejoice and do not be afraid. Be joyful; as the poet has said, be joyful, even though you have considered all the facts (Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front). Live without fear and expect to meet Jesus in the midst of our weary and wounded world. Because that is where he is, and he is waiting for us to join him. He is expecting us.

Rejoice and do not be afraid. Go and tell! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! He lives! And remember this: he is with us always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28.20b).


(c) Martha C. Highsmith

A Mystery

Today is the Sunday of Palms and Passion, and we covered the Communion Table with a quilt I made. It was made as a “mystery: quilt – more on that to follow.


The quilt is green and rose and purplish-maroon. I find even its colors to be a mystery – I, who am so fond of yellow and blue. And yet these colors are of my choosing, or perhaps they are colors that somehow chose me. Out of a thousand bolts of cloth, these were the ones that seemed to be right, these hand-dyed and batiked fabrics.

But as mysterious as the color choice was, it is not the colors that have given the quilt its mystery; it is its construction. Each month at my quilting group, we received an envelope with a set of directions. The first month, we were instructed to buy some yards of dark fabric and some of light fabric and some of contrasting colors, and I bought the green and purple and rose. The second month, I cut this mysterious cloth into strips and squares and sewed some of the pieces together. The third month, I cut some of these pieces into triangles and sewed them to some of the strips. Month by month, piece by piece, the quilt came together, but its overall design was a mystery until the end.

When the quilt was done, I found that it was the Garden. The green fabric, dotted with bright crimson blots, seemed to be the grass splashed now with sweat that had become like great drops of blood falling to the ground; the maroon batik with tropical leaves was, in truth, palm branches, trampled and discarded and broken in pieces; the rose-colored fabric with artist-like strokes seemed to be the Holy Spirit brushing over all. And when I saw the mystery being revealed, I stitched the whole with designs of crowns of thorns and crosses, piercing the fabric through with my needle.

The quilt is long-since finished, and yet the mystery remains. This Gethsemane quilt is a parable in cloth of the mystery of faith. The quilt is created by a pattern, a design that is careful and complete – and not of my own devising. The instructions are given, bit by bit, and patience is required to wait, to finish each step, to sit with the unknowness of this mysterious process.

This is the essence of Gethsemane, of the garden. It is experienced as a mystery, shaped by the hand of the Creator, with the full design of its meaning only revealed in the fullness of time. It is a place, a time, filled with unknowness, unknowing, pierced by the very threads that hold it together.

Fifth Sunday of Lent

A Near Death Experience

John 11:1-45

There has been a tradition at Carnegie Mellon University for faculty members to be invited to give their last lecture. That is what they would want to say to their students if they knew it was the last time they would address them. Last September, Professor Randy Pausch gave that lecture and for him it was not an academic exercise: it was the real thing. He has pancreatic cancer and had just been give maybe three to six months to live. He’s still living but has just stopped chemo because it really isn’t working any more. Death for him is not an abstraction. It is a reality that has shaped how he is living these days. In his lecture – you can see it on line – he talks about fulfilling his childhood dreams. And he says this: That he is not going to talk about death, but about life and how to live.

It is an amazing lecture – powerful and honest and moving. He is looking his own death squarely in the face, and doing that by living his life to the fullest. And perhaps most amazingly, he does not seem to be afraid.

That is surprising, because it seems that death is the great and secret fear of humankind. It is the one thing in our world that ultimately remains beyond our control. In modern times, we have solved many of the mysteries that baffled our ancient sisters and brothers. We can plot the path of storms; we know how the human body works; we can move mountains. In fact, we can do pretty much whatever we put our minds to. But we cannot avoid death. We can prolong life, yes, but we cannot avoid death. We will take heroic measures to keep it at bay. There are all kinds of medical interventions possible at the end of life these days, and almost all of them are intended to delay, postpone, push back the darkness of death.

I think that is because it is the final great mystery. For all our modern brilliance, we cannot truly understand what happens when someone dies. One of the professors at Yale, a doctor, has written a book titled “How We Die.” In it, he describes the physiological characteristics of death. But even with all his medical knowledge, he has not been able to explain why death comes when it does, what happens during death, or what comes next.

There are others who have written about their own experience with death. You know the stories: someone’s heart stops beating of the operating table, or someone has a terrible accident, or something like that, but they live to tell about it. If you’ve ever read or heard any of these stories, you’ll know that these folks focus more on what happens to them spiritually rather than physically. They often talk about moving in the direction of a great light, about feeling a sense of peace, about wanting to go rather than remain in the land of the living. For many of them, there is no more fear about death once they have had this kind of experience. But they can’t explain what happened to them. The doctors can’t explain it. The scientists can’t explain it. No one can explain it.

Death remains the ultimate mystery, and we do not deal well with mystery. Despite all our knowledge and skill and sophistication, we are no different from primitive peoples. Death makes us feel helpless and afraid. That is one of the reasons that Lent is such a somber season in the church. During Lent, we take an inevitable journey toward death. There is nothing we can do to avoid what is coming, just as there was nothing that Jesus’ disciples could do, although they tried. They did not want him to go to his friends at Bethany because the authorities were trying to do away with him. They wanted him to lie low, not stir up trouble, keep out of sight. And he would not. They were afraid he would be killed. And Thomas, without a doubt, was ready to die with Jesus. “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” And so they went, into a place of danger, a place of death and despair.

When they got there, they found that Lazarus had been buried for four days. Sorrow surrounded them; there was weeping and distress. Even Jesus was overcome with grief. But he called Lazarus forth out of the tomb, out of death, with a power that was beyond any earthly power, and Lazarus obeyed, stepping out into the light of day, the light of life, still bound by his grave cloths, with the smell of his own death filling his nostrils.

I wonder what that was like, but the scripture is silent on that point. Lazarus does not speak, does not tell us what it was like to be dead and buried for four days, to be beyond life and then called back. Lazarus has entered deep into the Mystery, and he has no words to tell of that experience. But if I find that frustrating, the scripture gently chides me. Because this story is not about Lazarus and his experience of being dead. This story is about seeing the glory of God in Jesus Christ and believing. This story is not preparation for understanding our own death. It is preparation for understanding life.

The heart of this story is not what happens at the open grave. It is what happens in the exchange between Jesus and Martha:

Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “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?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

“I am the resurrection and the life.” How will they remember that in only a few short weeks when he is crucified? How will they remember that when his tomb is open and empty. How will they remember that when he is among them again, the same and yet completely transformed? Will they understand?

No, they will not, because resurrection is an even greater mystery than death. The events that will take place in Jerusalem, in the garden, on the road to Emmaus, will defy understanding. The resurrection is not something they will be able to explain, to figure out. They will want proof, like Thomas. They will want to hang on, like Mary. But none of that will happen. Because the resurrection that Jesus talks about is not something to be analyzed. It is something to be believed. It is not like a question that has an answer or a problem that has a solution. It is a mystery that must be experienced.

When Jesus says: “I am the resurrection,” he is inviting us to enter into that mystery. But unlike what happened to Lazarus, resurrection is not something that happens to Jesus – it is who Jesus is. Jesus is the resurrection. Where there is death and nothingness, Jesus is. Where there is grief and despair, Jesus is. Where we have given up hope, Jesus is.

And in the end, it is not about death at all, but rather about life. Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” And he is inviting us to be resurrection and life also. After all, we are the Body of Christ, aren’t we? And that means that in spite of our brokenness and our woundedness,we are alive.

One of my favorite poems ends with this line: Practice resurrection. It seems to mean that resurrection is not something that happens to us only once, but that it is a continuing state of being. To practice resurrection is to practice Christ, the one who is the resurrection. It is to be always moving in the direction of life, offering life to others, living life abundantly. It is to understand that all of life is a near-death experience, in a way. It is living without fear, with faith.

There is no need, anymore, to fight death. Our Lord has already done that for us. Death has been conquered, once and for all. We will not, of course, escape a physical death. Not even Lazarus was able to do that in the end. But here is the great mystery that unfolds at the tomb: Death is not the end of life. There is a life in us that will not die, because Christ is in us. There is life in us and resurrection, too.

Jesus says: “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.” And then he asks a question – of Martha and of us: “Do you believe this?”

Do you?



(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Third Sunday in Lent

In Troubled Times

Exodus 17: 1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5: 1-11
Luke 4: 5-42

The children of Israel wandered in their wilderness for forty years. It was a long time, a time filled with troubles. They were in a barren place, a place of fear and isolation. Nothing was certain, not even life itself. They worried about water, they were afraid they would not have enough, they did not feel safe and secure. They quarreled and complained. They grumbled and murmured. They were full of discord, out there in that desert. They thought Moses was to blame for their troubles, but the real cause of their woe was the worry that lay at the heart of their complaint: “Is God among us or not?”

There was no longer any conviction among the people about the presence of God. In Egypt, they had been so sure. God came to them, God rescued them, God guided them. And then at the mountain, God spoke to them and gave them the law. God went before them in fire and smoke. But now….. now they were thirsty, and it was dry, and they were worried and afraid.

They had been willing to follow Moses -- up to a point. And they had reached that point. It seemed that God had abandoned them, brought them out into a wasteland to die. And they complained. And their complaint reached God’s ears.

Then, when Moses struck the rock, the water was there. God provided for them again. But the water had been there all along; they just couldn’t hear it flowing because the sound of their own discord was so loud that it drowned out the sweet life-giving music of the water.

All this happened a long time ago. It’s an old story, one that really doesn’t seem to bear much relationship to us. These were primitive people, wandering in the desert, thirsty and afraid. We, on the other hand, are modern and sophisticated by comparison, we have a settled society, we are not in danger of dying of thirst. We are very different from the Hebrew children. Or are we?

Maybe we too are wandering in a wilderness, except perhaps our wilderness is one of our own making. You see, we have made a world where war is the way to solve problems, where it is never possible to have enough stuff, where we are always wanting more and more and more. We worry about – everything.

And certainly, we do have our share of legitimate troubles. Things are mess in our society --
with the stock market and the housing market and the supermarket; everywhere high prices, high debts, high consumption. We worry about the economy; we worry about our future, our life after school; we worry about our health or the health of our parents; we worry about paying off our student loans or the mortgage or our credit card. We work hard to stay ahead and the reward is just – more work. And we worry about politics and who will be the next president; we worry about the war or the national debt; we worry about the kind of future our children and grandchildren will inherit.

We grumble, sometimes publicly, sometimes privately, because we don’t deserve these troubles, this uncertainty. In our heart of hearts, maybe we think God should be taking better care of us. And where is God anyway? Is God among us or not?

The answer to our troubles is held in the truth of the gospel: All that we need is already present in our lives, in our world. Like water hidden deep within the rock, God is here. With God there is an overflowing abundance of all that we need for life. But sometimes it is the sound of our own complaint, the low discordant notes of our murmuring, that keeps us from hearing God’s voice – a voice that calls us to the work of faithfulness and justice and peacemaking.

Today we are guided in our worship by a grand work of music. Haydn’s Mass in D Minor soars with beauty and power. It was written in a time of war and upheaval. Its title, Missa in Angustiis, means mass for troubled times. As it was a prayer for worship when it was first sung, so it is a prayer for worship for us here today. The Kyrie of our confession sounds a drumbeat that punctuates our need for mercy. The Gloria acknowledges the power and might of God and gives voice to a kind of adoration that we rarely express on our own. The Sanctus begins with a plaintive cry to God that quickly bursts into praise. In fact, the whole of this Mass sets to music the tension between our faith and our doubt, our certainty of God’s presence and our simultaneous skepticism. The blending here of minor and major keys, of dark, heavy chords and brilliant soaring solos, of power and of pleading – all this gives voice to the tension of our own troubled times.

And woven into this music is one form of the answer to the question: Is God among us or not? Can you hear it? The answer is in the music. The answer is in us. And as beautiful as this music is, it is just a small song in God’s cosmic symphony. And whether you can carry a tune or not, you have a note to sing in God’s song.

God’s people have always lived in times of trouble. We are no different. And in whatever wilderness we find ourselves, in the midst of whatever worries and complaints, with whatever doubt or despair, God is here, deep and flowing, hidden and powerful, present among us in abundance as a life-giving force.

So listen.

Listen.

And you will hear the sound of God’s living water, flowing forever. You will know that you have everything you need for life. You will not thirst for anything. Yes, God is indeed among us – here, now and always.


(c) Martha C. Highsmith

First Sunday in Lent

Of Trees and Gardens

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Psalm 32
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11

Once upon a time, at the beginning of time, the whole world was like a garden. It was so beautiful, planted and populated with every good thing, fresh and fragrant, because it was God’s garden. God created the garden for us, and it was God’s delight to be there with us.

The garden was full of trees, trees of all kinds: shade trees and fruit trees and flowering trees, trees bearing nuts and spices, quaking aspens and weeping willows, elms and oaks and evergreens. And in the middle of the garden, God planted a special tree, one of a kind. It was the tree of life. I imagine it as a big and beautiful tree, high and lifted up, with branches spread wide, and deeply rooted, too, firm and faithful, established there for all time. And it must have been that everything there was centered around this tree of life, and the life of the tree flowed out to everything else. It was as God intended: life in the center, goodness in abundance.

There were many trees in the garden and they were all meant for us, all of them except one. Somewhere in the garden, there was a tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God planted the tree in the garden where we lived but that tree was reserved for God alone.

We lived in that garden for a time, back when time was new, and we had everything we needed. And God would come and walk with us in the cool of the day. We lived with all creation and with God in perfect harmony. We even lived with each other in perfect harmony – that is part of what made it seem like paradise. It was so good, but since it was all we knew, we didn’t know there was anything so special about it. It was just the way the world was. It was just the way God meant it to be.

But it didn’t last. We began to have some stirrings, some longings, some cravings. It is hard to say where they came from exactly. They sneaked up on us somehow, like a snake in the grass, and pretty soon we became convinced that it wasn’t enough to be made in the image of God, to be like God. And it wasn’t enough to walk with God in the cool of the day, to be with God. It wasn’t enough to be like God, to be with God; we wanted to be God. So we reached out and seized that which was reserved for God alone. We claimed for ourselves the knowledge of good and evil.

And we scattered the seeds of that knowledge through the whole garden. And good sprouted up, yes, but so did evil. And somehow the evil has grown thicker and more pervasive, like briers in a garden, growing up so thick and fast that the tender green goodness almost gets choked out. And pretty soon the world doesn’t even look a garden at all any more. It looks like a wilderness. It is a dangerous place; it is a threatening place; this place where we live, this place where good and evil grow up together and become so entwined we cannot even tell them apart any more. And we feel alone in the wilderness; we are afraid of everything. We even hide ourselves from God.

And the world has been this way for so long that the pure green goodness of the garden seems like a fairy tale, a myth. We can no longer remember how it was when the world was new. We can’t even imagine what it was like we walked with God. We have a hard time believing that it was ever so. But God can remember it, God can envision it, God is faithful still. And deep in God’s heart, in the place where memory and vision and faithfulness flourish, God’s original intention for the world has not changed: life in the center, goodness in abundance.

And maybe the word that best describes all this is love. There is really no other way to explain why God just doesn’t give up on us. But God doesn’t. And God has gone to extraordinary lengths to show us what this love looks like. In order to reach humans who want to be God, God becomes human. And this human God, this God-man, the one we know as Jesus, walks into the world’s wilderness. He comes to us where we are, as we are. And just like all the rest of us, he too possesses the knowledge of good and evil. But unlike all the rest of us, he alone is not distracted by that knowledge; he is not corrupted by it. And because he has dwelled for all eternity in the realm of God, in the place where the garden still grows green, he knows the heart of God. He understands God’s intention for all creation. He understands it and he embodies it. He is life and he is love. And all that is good in creation is centered around him. And the life that is in him flows out to everything else. It is just what God intended: life in the center, goodness in abundance.

And because he is somehow like us, it seems possible for us to be somehow like him. It seems possible for us to resist the temptation to be other than who God intends us to be. It seems possible for us to resist the temptation to use our gifts for our own good, rather than the good of others. It seems possible for us to resist the temptation to exchange the power and glory of God for the sparkly glitter of the world. It even seems possible to see the world as God always intended it to be: life in the center, goodness in abundance. And if we are paying attention, we can even catch a glimpse of the garden.

And maybe that is what we are called to do in these forty days of Lent, these forty days of wilderness. Maybe we are called to pay attention to the places where the garden is breaking through. At the end of these forty days, there will be another kind of garden, and there will be another tree. Those who see only the wilderness, will look at it and think that it is a tree of death. But those of us who have caught a glimpse of God’s garden will come to the tree and know it as it really is: rooted and grounded in love, firm and faithful, established here among us for all time; and high and lifted up, with arms spread wide. We will come to the tree and know that it is the tree of life. And Jesus will be waiting for us, there in God’s garden – as it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be forever more. Amen.


(c) Martha C. Highsmith 2008

Epiphany

Not Much to Go On?

Matthew 2:1-12

It seems especially fitting to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany in a place like this doesn’t it? Think about it: Many of our usual number include travelers who have gone afar bearing gifts. As I was hoofing it through several airports over the last couple of weeks, I was remembering the days when going someplace on an airplane seemed a glamorous thing to do, exciting, almost luxurious. There was a time, some of you may remember, when the folks -- even those sitting in the back – got a hot cooked meal served on a little china plate. Nowadays, if you don’t bring your own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you’re probably not going to eat. And, of course, you have to be prepared to stand in long lines, take off a lot of your clothes, and unpack your bags for inspection. Travel these days is anything but glamorous.

But despite all the headaches and hassle when we set out on our holiday trips, we generally know where we will end up. Yes, it might take some delays and detours but eventually we will get where we intended to be. For the most part, for us, travel is inconvenient, a kind of necessary evil. We don’t usually consider it a life threatening or life changing adventure. We don’t do our traveling like the wise men.

It’s hard to know who they were exactly. They came from the East, perhaps from the country we know as Iraq. We picture them as kings, but it is more likely that they were scholars, those who studied the stars, the movement of planets and moons, the path of comets, the timing of meteor showers. They consulted both their ancient texts on earth and the celestial texts written in the heavens above them for whatever messages might be revealed. Would this be a year of drought or flood? Look to the heavens. Would there be times when the sun would be darkened and, if so, what would that mean? Could they predict the tides on their small stretch of coastline by looking to the moon? Was it possible to understand earthly events by the lights of the heavens?

These were scholars who had devoted their lives to such questions. And when they saw something new in their heavens and something ancient in their writings, and the two things came together in an unusual convergence that suggested the rise of a new ruler, they decided to go and see if their research was right. So they set out on a trip that would have likely been six or seven hundred miles over rough terrain, leading them into a land whose language they did not speak and whose customs they did not follow. Travel for them was not just a hassle. It was a daring and dangerous enterprise.

When you set out on a trip like that, you have to entertain the possibility that you may never return home, or that it will cost you everything you have, or that it will turn out to be a fool’s errand and instead of a pot of gold at the end, there might be nothing. They took a big risk without much to go on.

Would you do it? Would you set out on a trip like that? It is hard to imagine, at least for me. I want things planned out in advance. I want reservations made along the way. I want comfort and security and certainty. I want to know where I am going, how I will get there, and what will happen when I do. I am usually full of plans for how to get things done. Part of that is the nature of my work, and part of it is just my nature.

But the kind of journey the wise men took was not the kind that can be planned. They had no itinerary, no reservations. All they had to go on was their reading of their sacred texts, the ones written on parchment and the one written in the heavens. Interesting, isn’t it, that we call these men “wise.” What they did doesn't seem wise at all, does it? They left all they knew to go in the direction of something that might not even exist. They had no idea what they were really looking for. And there was a good possibility that they were wrong in their interpretations. In reality, at least our kind of reality, theirs was a journey of foolishness.

But that kind of foolishness is the foolishness that faith produces. To live a life of faith, a wise life, means living without much to go on. It is to watch the signs, to see what is revealed in the sacred – both on earth and in heaven – and then to act on that, to seek, to risk. It is to find yourself finding God, not in the places of power and might, but in a stable, in a crib, on a cross. To live a wise life is to go without reservations, to be willing to leave everything behind and set out for the unknown. And, oh, that is so hard for me – and maybe for you, too. I want to know, I want to be sure, I want to have a plan.

But here is the wisdom revealed in the light of the morning star – it isn’t about what we want at all. It is about what God wants. And our journey of faith means traveling in the direction in God’s direction – even when we have no idea what that is, where it leads, and what we might find along the way. This is a risky way to live. It threatens everything. The old way of life gets left behind and, in the process, all of life is changed.

And we don’t have much to go on to know the way, do we? Just an ancient set of writings, and a sign from heaven. That’s all. But that sign from heaven is the Light of the world. And that is enough to go on.




(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Christmas Eve

Born in Us Tonight!

Isaiah 9:2-7
Luke 2:1-120

This is a night for pageants and pageantry. All over the world, churches are clothed in gold and candlelight; children, and adults too, reenact the Christmas story; some of the most beautiful music in history is sung; there are great cathedrals where thousands gather to watch carefully choreographed processions, and there are small country churches like ours where worshipers come with less formality but no less faithfulness.

And there is a single thread that runs through all our celebrations, and it is this most ancient story of the birth of Jesus. It has been read and reread, told again and again, acted out, displayed, painted, sung, and depicted for thousands of years. All we have to do is hear a phrase or two in order to know what is coming. “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus.” “She brought forth her first born son.” “There were shepherds abiding in the fields.” This is the story we know by heart. It is a story we know in our hearts.

But it is often the case that something so familiar loses a bit of its original meaning, and that may be what has happened to Christmas. This story is not only about a newborn baby. It is about God being born into the world. It is about what the church calls incarnation – God taking on human flesh and living among us as one of us. That is the heart of this story, and if we can see the story with fresh eyes, it may be that we can learn something new about God, and eventually about ourselves. So imagine with me, if you will, how the story might be told if it were happening right now.

A young couple is on the road. His name is Jose, and she is Maria; she is very pregnant, and they are not married. They’re traveling in an old Toyota station wagon, kind of mustard colored, not pretty even when it was new in 1978. Every twenty miles or so, he has to pull over and put water in the radiator. They keep scraping their money together to buy a gallon of gas here or there, driving as carefully as they can in hopes that the gas will get them where they need to go. They are on their way to Raleigh; they have gotten an official looking piece of paper in the mail that tells them, in English and in Spanish, that there is some problem with their work visas and they need to appear in person to register with the government. So they are making this long trip in this old beat-up car in the middle of the night.

And maybe it is the stress of the travel or the worry about the visa or just that it is time, but Maria goes into labor. They are out in the country; they have no idea where the hospital is and even if they found it, they could not afford to seek care. So they try to keep going but the going is hard, and when they see the little lights up ahead, they both breathe a sigh of relief. Here is a town – maybe there will be someone who can help them.

It is a small town, and it is late at night and most of the houses are dark but some still have Christmas trees shining through the windows. And there are lights in the streets, street lights shining with decorations. All throughout the little town, the lights twinkle in the dark streets. Encouraged by that, Jose begins knocking on doors, but most people sleep through it, don’t even hear the sound. And the few who do are afraid to open up to a strange man, badly dressed, obviously poor, speaking Spanish, standing on the doorstep in the middle of the night.

And time is running out. This baby will not wait. So they pull the car around behind the Minute Mart where there is an outdoor water spigot, and he helps her into the back of the car and the baby is born. The water from the outside spigot is very cold, but he tries to warm it a bit in the car so he can wash off the aftermath of birth from his Maria and this new baby who will be called Jesus. And he takes his undershirt and tears it into strips and gives it to her to wrap around the baby so he will be warm and snug. Then they settle down to sleep; they are exhausted.

But soon there is a tapping on the window of the car, and the car is surrounded by a group of bikers wearing their black leather jackets, motorcycle engines still thrumming in the night. They are frightened by the sight of these unexpected visitors.None of them can figure out why the bikers are there, not the bikers or Jose or Maria.

Somehow the bikers just had to come. They saw the light in the car and they came to investigate. So Maria shows them the baby and the sight of that small face, those tiny hands, melts the hearts of those big tough guys. Before they go back to the road, they take out saddlebags with cheese and beef jerky and some bottles of beer. It’s the best they have to offer, and for some unknown reason, they feel they need to give something to this family, to this child.

And then they go roaring off into the night, but when they get together with their buddies later on, they tell the story about that baby, about that mother and father, about the light in that car and in that town,
and they tell how that encounter made them want to give what they had away. They don’t understand it, but they tell the story nonetheless.


This isn’t the way it happened, of course. The first ones to come to visit the child were shepherds, not bikers. The baby was born in a stable, not in the back of an old beat up car; and it was the little town of Bethlehem, not the little town of Atkinson.

But maybe if it were happening today, tonight -- this miraculous birth – maybe it would happen in a place like this. And here is the good news, the good news of great joy. It does happen tonight, and it does happen in a place like this.

It is not enough for us just to remember the birth of the baby Jesus. It is not enough to celebrate with hymns and gifts and family gatherings. If that is all we did, we would miss the point. Christmas is more than the story of a baby born to desperately poor people far from home with no place to stay. It is about God in Christ coming into the world. It is about God in Christ present even now. That is the good news, and we are to respond to this good news by seeking the one who has come seeking us.

But if we are to find this Savior we will need to look in the unlikely places. Remember his own words:
I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me…. Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. (Matthew 25: 35-36; 40)

The Christ who is born of Mary is present in the world in the faces of the poor and the hungry, the refugee and prisoner, the sick and lonely. And also, I have to believe, in the faces of the rich and the rulers, the powerful and the presidents, the movers and shakers – but sometimes you may have to look a little deeper there in order to see. The Christ who is born of Mary is present in all people. May we be watching for him, making room for him, welcoming and serving and offering ourselves to him.

And, dear friends, because Christ is present in the hearts of all, then the Christ who is born of Mary is also present in us. The Christ who is born of Mary is the Christ who is born of us. As one holy man (Meister Eckhardt) has said: “We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity... But if that birth does not take place in me, what good is it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me. What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the son of God [two thousand] years ago and I do not give birth to the son of God in my time and in my culture?”

As we celebrate God’s wonderful gift to us in Bethlehem, may we also celebrate it in Atkinson, and in all the other places where we are. Our Christ is still Immanuel – God with us. And that is good news of great joy for all people. For unto us, and within us, is born this day, this very day, a savior who is Christ the Lord!


Thanks be to God! Amen.



(c) Martha C. Highsmith