How are you called to be a Witness?

Luke 24: 36b-48

http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=88#gospel_reading - link to Bible passage

You are in morning. A very dear friend has passed from your existence and yet some people talk about seeing him. You are skeptical. Ghosts are not real and everyone sane knows that. Perhaps the loss of their friend has driven them from their senses, but you know reality from fiction.  You know no one could possibly have seen Jesus. He was dead.

Then Jesus appears before you. Fear and trepidation are your first thoughts, perhaps anger that someone is tricking you. Doubt. Did someone slip something in my drink? If Jesus is truly before me then what else that I thought could never happen is true? Do I know truth? Panic, fear, confusion a complete sense of loss is overpowered by your desire to make what you see real and an equal desire to explain away what you see so that it is not real, because if it is real....then...then what?

Into this bedlam of confusion, internal and external turmoil Jesus himself says “Peace be with you” ......and it is. The peace that passes understanding, the peace of Christ. You are transformed and come to a broader understanding in that moment because of the peace of Christ.

The first followers of “the way” or early Christians were not dumb, nor were they superstitious or easily fooled. They were not any different from you or I and to see someone you know to be dead appear before you showing you that there is substance to his body would be startling at best, causing you to verge on a breakdown at worse. This truly allows you to understand how important those words of peace are.

When we speak them each week in church, they are not empty wishes, they are not just moments to catch up with each other – they are truly a moment where we can offer each other the peace that passes understanding a true desire for peace to each other. A blessing of the highest order that Christ will give you the blessing of peace right there in that moment no matter what you are going through, no matter how far away from peace your life is at that moment.

The peace of Christ that we offer each other is truly a gift from God that can transform our lives as well as all those that you choose to pass that gift on to.

Then Jesus shows us his hands and feet. The very hands and feet that have been tortured, that walked to Golgatha that were nailed to the cross. They are his, they are not imaginings, or phantoms but actually his real body. They are not completely healed. Maybe that says something to us. When we come to Christ and accept Christ and receive the peace of Christ we still have our baggage, our scars, or skeletons. What ever you like to call them. We still have them. Christ still had them, but we are no longer held down by them. Jesus was no longer pinned to the cross by them, he no longer experienced pain from the holes in his hands and feet. Perhaps that has something to say for us. Christianity is not magic, it does not make what has happened to us disappear, our faith does not conquer our experiences, but with Jesus we no longer have to be held down by it. We are no longer alone in those pains, we can be free to experience a peace no one can take from us.

Then Jesus asks for a meal. This is why communion is so important to me. In each of the experiences Jesus has after rising from death those around him come to know him through sharing of a meal – through hospitality. We come to know God when we share in communion because it is where God chooses to meet us in a special way. It is hospitality. We can choose to share that hospitality as I did with the snacks on the way in, or we can choose to go through the motions and leave with a bit of bread and grape juice in our stomachs. But if we seize the opportunity to come to know Christ in the moment of hospitality, of sharing bread and fruit of the vine with one another and Christ in Holy communion and just allow God's presence to be soaked up as the disciples did – God can transform you as he did them.

But be warned that if you choose to come to the table in that manner Christ also is going to expect some more from you. 

He continued to explain the scriptures. Notice these are learned people in the scriptures yet they still need to discuss them in a group, to work on them and to accept and expect new understandings each time they review them. How many of us truly approach Bible study in this manner – with eyes wide open and expectant? 

Then Jesus calls for us to repent and through that repentance find forgiveness. The forgiveness that comes from God and God alone.  We can not do anything but turn to God, God does the rest. 

Finally we are called to be witnesses to ALL NATIONS beginning in Jerusalem of these things that happened.

That is what just may happen if you come to the table expectant.  Mind you Jesus's witnesses did not seem to mean in this context going about telling people how to act. Witnessing seemed to start with hospitality, with an open table to all who wished to partake, with an expression of love. Then it seems that it continued with conversation and with that understanding, following personal repentance and forgiveness. In no place did Jesus tell us to tell our neighbor what was wrong with him, or how she should be living. I know we can be quite good at that. No Jesus asked us to be his witnesses, to share his good news.

For me that good news is that I am not alone in this uncontrollable world. I have an ally. I am loved and accepted no matter what and that repentance and forgiveness is an ongoing cycle mixed in with good conversations and getting to know people. The good news is a love that I know God has for me despite the fact I am not worthy of it, and could never live a perfect enough life to be worthy of it. I am still trying to figure out how to witness to that and I think that is part of my call. It is one of those things that I will get close to be not really get. And that is okay because I am not in it alone.

What are you called to be a witness to? How are you called to be a witness? What do you need to do to witness to all people, or show love to people you have a hard time loving? What are you being called to this very moment in that small and still place in your heart?

Living

On my three hour trek to school the other day I found myself thinking.  That is one thing I truly enjoy about the commute!  I was thinking about why I have been struggling so much lately.  I don't look like I am struggling (at least I thought so), but I feel it.  I feel regret over rushing my kids, or not savoring every single moment I could.  I feel anxiety over them growing so fast and worrying whether they understand how much I love them.  I worry about my daughter going to school and bullies.  I worry about selling our house, and if we do sell our house.  I worry about serving God and helping people, and what if I cause someone else to fall on their journey.  I focus on how to get through.... I push forward and so often I find myself thinking I only have to get through the next month....three months....week.  

Then I stopped.  

God has given me a precious gift.  God died and over came death not so that I could "get through" but so that I may LIVE.  I need to live in the moment.  To truly stop and breath and experience the now.  Enjoy my morning stretch, take my son's screaming fit as a time to practice meditative breathing, to notice the world around me waking up.  God died for me so that I may Live.  Live now and here and be.  God did not die so that I could live in heaven alone, but so that I could live here on Earth.  So I could experience God's fingerprints in everything around me and notice them. God came for me.  Not to get me through, not to push me through this life, but give me a chance to see it with new eyes each morning and a new heart full of promise each evening, if I allow it.

Yet I find myself a million times a day slipping into my conventional thinking, trying to escape the here and now because it can be overwhelming, frightening and unpredictable.  I guess that is why God gives us those moments of clarity.  That way we can think back to them and refocus ourselves, and work on training our brains to let God in and stop getting through.

An Easter People

Mark 16:1-8a (Click on the link to read).
Bible Gateway parallel passage

The women hear the news of Jesus and run away scared.  The story is left open, and no original ending exists other than that for Mark.  Scribes over the years feeling the incompleteness have added their own endings trying to tidy it up a bit, but that is not how Mark wrote it.  Why?

Mark was reflecting life, on our lives.  We are not tidy; there are no absolutes in our endings, our beginnings nor our middles.  Life is messy and complicated and God speaks to us in it.  Sometimes God scares the crap out of us and sometimes there are just cliff hangers and you have to decide what to do. Mark is inviting you to the cliff hanger.  Now what?  The three people who knew the story run home in silence not to tell the story, but wait …. now you know.  So what do you do?

In our culture we are drawn to either the grossly horrific – reality television, or the fairy tales – those love story movies like Sleepless in Seattle or You’ve Got Mail.  We want assurance that our lives aren’t “as bad as all that”, and we are not as screwed up as we thought.  We also want assurance that there still is a happy ending for someone, and maybe it will be me someday.

In telling our own stories we add or delete things depending on how it makes us sound, or what the point is that we are trying to make.  We try to forget things that happened and gloss up occurrences to remember only the best bits. 

This is what Mark knows.  People have not changed their story telling so dramatically in two thousand years that Mark didn’t recognize those patterns in the stories of his day.  He wants us to pay attention to this story; he wants to leave space in this story for us, each and every single one of us, because this is not the story of Jesus alone, or Mary Magdalene, or Mary the mother of James or Salome.  This is the beginning of our story. 

God meets you in your mess; God meets you where you are.  Sometimes we are like Mary Magdalene, who has just watched your best friend be tortured and killed, to be poked and prodded like a horrific side show attraction.  You have seen him carried into a tomb and struggled to grasp how someone so alive, so vibrant, so full of love and life, someone who has done only good has died.  How could an innocent man who has done nothing to hurt anyone physically – just their pride be killed by a mob.  How helpless and how confused she must have felt when she ran into that angel.

Thirteen years ago today I lost my dad and God gained an angel.  The empty hollow feeling was there, the anger at God; the struggle to grasp your brain around the hole that has been ripped into your being was there. I imagine the three women felt very much like that. 

I imagine we have all felt beyond God’s love, beyond hope, beyond compassion, beyond being touchable by God at some point.  Perhaps you were so angry with your situation that if an angel showed up telling you be not afraid you would punch him and then ask him what kind of idiot he was.  You were hurt and angry and afraid to figure out how to live in a new way and then this angel comes all glowing white to tell you what to feel?  When my dad died an old car got the sore end of a crowbar – I am not sure what I would have done to that angel if he showed up while I was beating up a junker in the junk yard.  On a good day I may have run away in fear and trepidation like Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome.  On a bad day I probably would have tried to bargain for my dad and then punched him.

But this is the point - Jesus came for us in those moments, in these moments.  Jesus came to show us how to live through the pain, to comfort us and let us know we are not alone in this world, to guide us and challenge us to live up to his standards.  Jesus rose from that tomb to share with us the Holy Spirit so that at any point and time we have direct access to God and knowledge that God is listening, is there and will help us through it if we can just allow him enough space in our life.

The challenge Mark leaves us with is not three silent women walking away from a tomb.  The challenge Mark leaves us with is what are you going to do with the good news?  What are you going to do with the precious and perfect gift of the Holy Spirit?  Are you going to lock it within yourself where it can grow old and moldy and loose its power or are you going to live it?  To act like a resurrected people?  Are you going to choose to look for God and to see the footprints of the Holy Spirit in your lives every day or are you going to stare into a dusty empty tomb and regret what is now not the same?  God is calling us on this resurrection Sunday to live!  To see! To Hear! God is calling us to seek and find and make this our story.  How are you going to do that?  How are you going to be an Easter people?

Questions from Maudy Thursday's Reading John 13:1-17, 31-35

John  13:1-17, 31b-35

"Very truly I tell you whoever receives one whom I send receives me and whoever receives me receive shim who sent me" (13:17)

How do you receive others?

What about others that you don’t like?

How do you carry yourself with strangers?  With friends?  With co-workers?  With those of a different class?  Different color?  Different ethnicity? Different faith?  Different sexuality?  Different clothes, make up hair?

Who do you allow to intimidate you?  To bully you?

Who do you intimidate?  Bully?

How are you carrying this out today?

What are you actually doing, not just what you think, but actually do?

"Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." 13:35

What does love look like as a Christian?

How do we show love?

How did Christ show love to us?

What are we being called to?  What are we being called to - collectively?

Can others tell we are Christians (without looking at your cross necklace, or the fish on your car)?

Can people who meet you tell that you are a Christian without asking you?  

                                                            If not you better reevaluate how you show your love.