The Keyhole of Repentance

THERE IS SOMETHING SPACIOUS about the gospel viewed through the keyhole of repentance. Something to the spare, Spartan spaces that mark a season of penitence. One chapel I know turns its altar so the people can see Jesus’ dying words: “I thirst.” Another adorns its sanctuary with a bare tree, not a leaf on it. The signs are those of severity. We make a hash of this world. We leave it bare. There is no health in us.

Lent says the tree will not always be bare. We will not always be health-less. And Jesus will not always thirst. Augustine of Hippo says Jesus thirsts for those gathered around him—he longs to drink them in, make them part of his body. That is, Jesus’ own murderers, the oblivious passers-by, his fellow convicts (his own disciples are long gone).

Lent is long. If you’re like me or my church, our Lenten devotions have grown a bit tepid by now. These final weeks are good times for renewal. The first weeks of Easter, in the ancient church, were a time when the newly baptized would gather daily to marvel at the wonders of their new faith. So too can we.

It’s been a year of strange happenings, politically and culturally. Our inclination is to lash out. There is plenty of blame to be distributed. Lent asks us to lash in. We are the first at fault, whoever we are. And then to praise. Try though we might, we cannot stop the Lord of life. And neither can anyone else.

[ April 2 ]

Stinketh to High Heaven

Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45

LENT IS SUPPOSED to be a time when we hold off on hallelujah. Liturgically, we don’t say the “h” word as we repent for 40 days. Resurrection comes at Easter, not before.

But resurrection keeps breaking out in advance in these texts. God can’t help it, seemingly. We’re busy muffling our joy and God is busy broadcasting it.

The Ezekiel text may be the most gratuitously physical in the Bible: God is the one who opens up graves and puts flesh and sinews back on skeletons. The letter to the Romans promises that where the Spirit is there is life, resurrection, the prophet’s empty grave. Lazarus was stone dead—bystanders were worried about the smell (“already he stinketh,” says Young’s Literal Translation). And yet there Lazarus is again—his worst problem is being bound, mummy-like, by grave clothes he no longer needs. He liveth.

Before resuscitating Lazarus (poor man has to die again—hence this is no resurrection), Jesus does an odd thing. He gets angry (John 11:33). Others mourn, but he’s pissed. He hates death. Hates what it does to us, his people. Hates the delay before all will be raised and made whole.

Tyrants love death. It’s their tool of choice to keep folks behaving. But what would it mean not to fear it? What would it mean to have a Lord who snorts at it? What would it mean to be a people who know the grave is only temporary and, until the last day, Jesus sneers at it?

[ April 9 ]

Justice Mocked

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 26:14 - 27:66

THIS HAS TO BE the strangest Sunday we have all year.

The gospel takes a year to read. Jesus goes from being acclaimed king so universally the rocks threaten to join (Luke19:37-40), to executed as a state criminal. Many churches call it “Palm/Passion” Sunday now and commemorate both the great parade with the donkey and the children and the palms, and also the sham trial, the mockery of justice, and the act of capital punishment. If you and they don’t leave with whiplash, go back and do it again.

If evangelical Christians over-fixate on Jesus’ saving work, mainline liberals tend to ignore it. Progressives don’t know what to say about the cross, so we leave that territory to others. These texts give us plenty to say, as Fleming Rutledge makes clear in her magisterial The Crucifixion. Jesus unequivocally rejects violence (Matthew 26:52). He suffers with all those abused by sham justice prejudiced against the poor and minorities (27:57-68). He dies abandoned not just by friends, but by his faith and seemingly even God (27:46).

And yet even here the mystery of resurrection keeps erupting in advance. Barabbas is a sign of salvation—set free by no merit of his own, his place taken by Jesus (27:15-23). In The Undoing of Death, Rutledge preaches of the three signs—the earthquake, the torn temple curtain, and the raised saints (27:51-53). The author of life here suffers death to grant life to his murderers. We do have something to say here, don’t we?

[ April 16 ]

Darkness to Light

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

WE DON'T NEED our best sermon today. The best sermon has already been preached—it’s Mary Magdalene’s “I have seen the Lord” (John 20:18).

John’s gospel loves light and dark. And today starts in the dark. If you have an Easter sunrise service, and you should, you start today in the dark as well. We all do. Soon lights will blare. Trumpets will blast. Tombs will be empty. Creation will be remade like God intended in the first place only better. But not yet.

Our age loves running. Theologian Sarah Coakley jokes about our intention to keep “jogging on (literally)” forever. In the ancient world folks didn’t ordinarily run by choice (John 20:4). But tombs weren’t ordinarily empty, either. John and Peter see Jesus’ grave clothes and facecloth neatly rolled up. This is no grave robbery. It’s an insurrection against the reign of death.

Each of the three characters experiences the resurrection differently—Mary experiences it best of all. She thinks the man she sees is the gardener (20:15). What blue-collar worker do we think is “just” something functional? Not until he says her name does she see and reach for her rabbi. And then he turns her away for a reason no one has yet comprehended (20:17).

Lots of dark and confusion for a day so bright and glorious. But then God is always just outside our grasp, saying our name and then stepping out of the confined space we would give. Jesus is “mine,” for sure. And yet I can’t keep him from everybody else.

[ April 23 ]

Dealing in Doubt

Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

WHAT A GIFT to have multiple weeks for Easter. We can’t pack all the wonder into one day. So the church gives us months.

We are still in John’s resurrection stories, which Caravaggio portrayed better than anyone. The light and the dark are as stark and gorgeous as the gospel. In Caravaggio’s painting of Thomas, the doubter’s fingers are physically in Jesus’ side, prying skin open with sheer bafflement. Like the Creator separating flesh to yank a rib from Adam, Thomas reaches inside this new Adam and finds life unimaginable.

This is what God does with Thomas’ doubts. What can God do with ours?

The Sunday after Easter is famously a “low” Sunday. The guests are gone, the relatives back in Hoboken, any pastor who can is on vacation. But what if we linger with this story like Thomas? Make physical demands that God demonstrate resurrecting power anew? We might find ourselves among those “blessed” by Jesus for believing without having seen (John 20:29).

Thomas utters the highest Christology in the Bible, “my Lord and my God” (20:28). No doubt (!) he is identifying flesh and blood Jesus with the Lord of Israel, Creator of the worlds. Theologian Teresa Berger grew up in Germany, where her Catholic parents taught her to repeat Thomas’ words in response to the Words of Institution in the liturgy. We can also say them whenever we see Jesus—in his beloved poor, in the scriptures, in whatever hell he’s presently harrowing.

[ April 30 ]

Sheol’s Tentacles

Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19;1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35

FRUIT HANGS HEAVY in the Emmaus story—Jesus teasing his friends, vanishing as he breaks bread, their hearts burning within them—the story preaches itself. So let’s glance at the psalm instead, shall we? How often do we volunteer as guileless a confession as that in 116:1, “I love the Lord”? The psalmist doesn’t very often—only here and in Psalm 18. But you would profess your love for the Lord too if you were tangled in Sheol’s tentacles, drowning (116:3). Real distress produces real prayer. And then God bends the ear (116:2). Imagine it—God doesn’t listen the way we do, simply awaiting our turn to talk. God is all ears.

And we are in pain. This is not just the prayer of a private individual. For the church, the “I” in the psalter is Jesus, praying for every Sheol in which human beings dwell—Aleppo, South Korea, the United States, probably several more trouble spots by the time you read this. The resurrection is not just a trick performed by Jesus. It’s God’s intention for all humanity, for all creation.

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones” (116: 15)—a verse often applied to martyrdom or tragedy. But how is death precious? Not on its own. It’s ugly, world-defacing, widow-and-orphan making. But once God undergoes death personally, it’s a sign of resurrection. All God needs to bring new life is a grave. Do we have any of those?