Church of the Epiphany

Proper 14
Matthew 14

“And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but Jesus was asleep.  And they went and woke him saying, ‘Save us Lord; we are perishing.’ And he said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?’  Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.  And the disciples marveled saying, ‘What sort of man is this, that even the winds and sea obey him?’”

Our gospel lesson is a parallel with what I just read from Matthew 8.  Matthew emphasizes Jesus’ superiority to Moses and the Torah.  Jesus brings not only new teachings, he is a king for and in a new kingdom.  At the end of the Sermon on the Mount there is a key phrase: ‘When Jesus had finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.’

The question asked by the disciples in Matthew 8 gets answered throughout the rest of the book?  ‘Who is this?’  This is one who calms the storm, one who casts out the devil, one who heals the sick, one who teaches with authority, and literally, one who walks on water.

What is happening around these events?
There was unbelief–Jesus’ rejection in his hometown.  John the Baptist was beheaded by Herod Antipas.

There was faith:
Jesus was exhausted from ministry: from casting out demons, from healing the sick, from
feeding the 5000+.

Then there is faith and unbelief found in one person, Peter.

Jesus sends the disciples on the other side of the sea.  He is anxious about the journey to Jerusalem–and his first ministry in Gentile lands

And while the disciples are struggling to fight a storm–Jesus is where?  In prayer for nine hours +

You know the rest of the story.  Jesus doesn’t calm this storm, he walks on the water right through it.  The disciples are afraid when they see him, like they have seen a ‘ghost’ and the word there is closer to a ‘deceptive spirit,’ that is, a demon.

The rest of the scene is all about Peter.  This is his moment.  He wants proof that this is not a demon but Jesus.  ‘If it is you, call me to walk on the water.’

Peter does, for a moment, then, echoing Matthew 8, he takes his eye of Christ and on the storm and says, ‘Lord save me.’

Peter is very important to Matthew.  He is the leader of the disciples without a doubt.  But he is full of flaws and leaps before he thinks.
This burst of emotional energy to get him out on the water is ‘effective enough to motivate him but not effective enough to sustain him.’

Peter is the high low, the emotional and the depressed.  The passionate and faithful disciple and the stumbling bumbling disciple.

Peter is the ultimate study in contrasts.  He will make the ultimate profession: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!’  Then he will be tool of Satan.  He will be in the inner circle at the Mountain of Transfiguration, then he will mess it up by wanting to pitch tents.  He walks on water, then takes his eye off Christ.  He says he will die for Jesus, and then denies him three times.

Many preachers want to focus on Peter’s foibles.  Ha ha, silly Peter sinking to bottom, taking his eyes off Jesus.  How much do I need to remind you of the fact that if you take your eyes off of Christ, you’re in for a heap of trouble?

When you take your eyes off of Christ and put it on the difficulty or the pain or the trouble or anything else, you’ll find yourselves sinking in a storm.

I’m sure that Matthew wanted to remind his audience of Peter’s clay feet and humble beginnings.  But he also wants to remind all who read his gospel of the authority and power of Jesus.  He doesn’t still the storm, he ignores it.  He doesn’t fear the water or waves, he walks on them as if he is on a neighborhood stroll.  The kingdom of heaven is at hand.  ‘Truly this is the Son of God.’

What is key here is not what Peter fails to do or what he cannot see.  It is not so much his lack of faith that is remarkable but the evidence of his faith!  Look at what Peter does right.

John Ortberg says, “ This is the fundamental truth: if you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat.  If you want to experience the power of God in your life, you’ve got to take a step of faith.  It involves risky obedience.”

Peter does two things here that is very important.  First, he gets out of the boat.  Second, he calls on Jesus when he sinks.

While the other disciples are shivering and panicked, while they are trying in their own strength to solve yet another storm, Peter does what?  He gets out of the boat.  He has listened to Jesus’ words, he has seen his power, why not?

This is faith.  It is faith to look at an impossible situation, to look at something that we have no ability to walk into and to put out our faith and to step out.  Peter gets out of the boat.
There is nothing that we can accomplish in the kingdom of God, there is no way of facing our fears and our grief and our pain and our unbelief unless we do what?  Step out, and get out of the boat.

Peter knew it. When Francis walked into the woods naked he knew it.  When Benedict walked away from the city of Rome to the countryside he knew it.  We know that of the saints, but we have somehow domesticated them.  Being a faithful Christian is akin to walking on water.  But we keep those who have done it faithfully at a distance.

As Thomas Merton says, ‘We have buried [the saints] in our own routines, and thus securely insulated ourselves against any form of spiritual shock from their lack of conventionality.”

When someone is baptized, regardless of their age, they are stepping out of the boat.

Every Christian in every age who have not bowed the knee to Cesar but who have proclaimed Christ as Lord knew it.  As John Ortberg says, ‘if you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat.

John Burtness told us Friday at the men’s group about a Yale professor who lost his son at 25 in a mountain climbing accident wrote a book called Lament For a Son.  He talks of the difficulty of having faith through his loss, especially when everyone else is like Job’s wife who says, ‘why don’t you just curse God and die?’

He says, ‘Faith is a footbridge that you don’t know will hold you up over the chasm until you’re forced to walk out onto it.’

Peter had guts.  Peter was willing to live on the edge.  Peter was willing to face what he knew was sheer terror–don’t forget he was a seasoned fisherman familiar with storms!

If you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat.

The Youthworks leaders told us the other night that just last week, there was an 80 year old woman who was so convinced that a Youthworks mission trip would be important for the teenagers in her church that she would go and lead them–even when no one else would.  That’s stepping out of the boat!

Lastly, Peter sank.  But our focus should not be his sinking–we sink all the time.  It is not so much his sinking but who he cried out to when he did.  Peter knew that the Lord had every ability to save him.

Ortberg again says, “…only Peter knew that when he sank, Jesus would be there, and he was wholly adequate to save.  The other disciples could not know because they never got out of the boat.”

Included in the Creed we are about to say is that we believe in the ‘forgiveness of sins…’  This is really the hallmark of our faith.  There is no anxiety about the God we serve, at least there shouldn’t be.  Now of course when Peter was sinking, Jesus didn’t say, “hey Peter, no worries, embrace your sinkingness.”  No, Peter knew he was about to sink into despair.  But what puts Peter above the rest is his ability to call out when he was sinking.

If we want to walk on water, we have to get out of the boat, but when we fall and sin and make mistakes, Jesus is always there to pull us out.  We still have to face the mire, but Jesus is always there, strong and mighty to save.

My advice to our Youthworks leaders is that you keep that in mind.  God has called you to radical things, as he has called all of us.  But we cannot walk on water by ourselves.  Only he gives us the ability to do anything and only he can save us when we fall.

Easter 4
Acts–Stephen

What is the Christmas hymn you hear every year?

Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even;
Brightly shone the moon that night, tho’ the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight, gath’ring winter fuel.

The hymn is about Winceslas I, a Checz king who helped the poor in his country even during winter months.  The Feast of Stephen, of course, is when?  December 26th.

That begs the question, who is Stephen?  He is the main character in today’s reading from Acts.  He was chosen and ordained by the apostles themselves to be one of the first Deacons.

We live in a day where our resumes are extremely important.  What is our experience?  Where were we educated?  What degrees do we have?  What are our references?  It’s not what you know, but who you know.  This whole process is agonizing for me and a bit narcissistic! But it’s got to be done.  I would challenge you to think of a different kind of resume.  Since we’re in Easter season, I might call it a ‘resurrection resume.’

Stephen had a heckuva ‘resurrection resume.’  The Scripture says he was full of faith, full of the Holy Spirit, and that he was (charis)matic–that is, gifted of God and full of God’s power.  So much so that miracles were done at his hands.  The book of Acts is a vast document which has important speeches by its two stars: Peter and Paul.  But Luke reserves his longest speech for a little known Deacon full of the Spirit, Stephen.

For Luke, a strong symbol of the presence of the Holy Spirit is someone who opens their mouth and speaks truth.  ‘Were not our hearts burning within us when he was explaining the Scriptures?’ So say the two on the road to Emmaus when Jesus opened their minds to understand the Law and the Prophets.  Stephen does the exact same thing.  Top on his resume was his knowledge of the Scriptures.

But it is a knowledge that is unconventional.  It is seeing and understanding the Scriptures in a new way–or at least being able to see what was not obvious on its face.  The religious leaders knew the story of Abraham, Moses and Solomon just as well as Stephen.  But Stephen was able to get to the heart of the Tanakah and see it as a huge signpost to Jesus–the Son of Man and Son of God.

Abraham was important because he was father Abraham.  All of the promises of God about the people of God are represented by Abraham, especially in terms of the land of promise.  Yet Jesus transcends Abraham–hence Jesus transcends the land.  Moses was the representative of the Law–the Law which gave the people of God their identity. The Law that showed them the heart of God–yet nothing showed the heart of God more than his Son Jesus.

Solomon is a representation of the Temple.  The Temple was God’s footstool, his throne.  The presence of God was palpable in the Temple.  Yet, as Stephen says, no place can contain God.  Yet God is very much contained in Jesus Christ.  He is now the Temple of God.

Stephen’s words were from the Scriptures–yet they were words no one wanted to hear–because if they heard them the way Stephen preached them–they would have to change their lives.  I hope that you don’t miss the real radicalism that is in the Scripture.  Here’s one–‘love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who harm you.’

That’s radical stuff.  More than ever our world needs a different vision of how to live and we conduct ourselves.  You may or may not like Jim Wallis.  But he has recently coined one of the most intriguing terms, ‘Conservative Radical.’  He writes this:

Maybe what we need is a new paradigm altogether—we might call it “the conservative radical.” To be conservative means to be rooted—in a tradition, in faith, in core values. To be radical also means to be rooted (“radical” stems from the Latin word “radix,” which means “root”), which gives one a consistent perspective on the world. So these two—conservative radical—may not be contradictory but in fact deeply complementary.

While Wallis is talking mostly about the political process, I would argue that this kind of thing can only come from the people of God, the Body of Christ.  The Bible makes us radical and counter cultural.  It talks about sexual purity and faithfulness in marriage and all of the ‘family values’ kind of thing.  But it also gives a radical nature of the world–go back to the words of Jesus.  Love your enemies, rejoice when people speak bad of you and when they exclude and revile you on account of the Son of Man–rejoice and be glad!! Do good to those who hate you.

Even the Old Testament is one of the most radical documents.  The prophets railed against the people of God because they worshiped as if everything was great–yet their worship was perverted because they were observing the feasts of Israel, yet at one and the same time they were negligent of the poor, the widow, the orphan and the stranger.

The content of Stephen’s sermon caused his hearers to consider one important thing: we are dead wrong about everything that we hold dear.  If Jesus is the Son of God, if Jesus is risen, everything changes.  One of my favorite historians was Jaroslav Pelikan–a deep writer on the history of the Church who taught many years at Yale.  He wrote with the insight of a historian, yet with the passion of a faithful Christian.  He died of cancer a couple of years ago.  On his deathbed he said this: ‘If Christ is risen, nothing else matters.  And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.’

The religious leaders who heard Stephen’s sermon had a choice, repent and change everything, or go on doing what they were doing and eliminate Stephen.  They chose the latter.  They chose to ignore Stephen’s words, they refused to see the Scriptures in a different way.

More than ever we need to see the Scriptures radical documents for our time.  They tell us about God, but they also bring us face to face with this God.  They tell us stories of Jesus, but if we allow them we can hear the radical call to follow him, no matter what we have to leave behind in the process.

There is one last entry in Stephen’s resurrection resume.  Though his radical preaching of the Scriptures got him stoned, he was full great love.  What were his last words?  ‘Do not hold this sin against them.’

This is love of the radical sort.  This is a love that loves whether the other deserves it or not, a love only Jesus can give–a love of the most radical sort.  Stephen’s words should remind you of Jesus’ words, ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.’

This is the kind of love that doesn’t ignore the wrongdoing of the other, it is loving despite their wrongdoing.  In Stephen’s case, it was a love for the ones killing him.  This is incarnational love of the highest sort.  If loving cost us our lives, could we do it?  Love of Christ and love of neighbor?

I read recently of a 19th century Belguim saint named Father Damien.  He was one of the first missionaries to Hawaii.  Now that sounds great to me but there was an island in the 19th century called the Island of Molokai.  This was no resort island but a colony for lepers.  But Fr. Damien felt the Lord wanted him there not only to preach Christ but to serve the lepers in a most radical way.  The island itself smelled of rotting flesh and was full of contagion. One writer says that he:
“Built homes for the people, made coffins for the dead, and grew food for the hungry.  He worked tirelessly among a people who were not his own and who had an illness he did not have.”

He constantly knocked on the doors of Rome for them to send supplies and to be advocates for his new brothers and sisters in Christ.

Then one day, after a hard day of work, he was soaking his feet in a pot of hot water, and he could no longer feel them.  He had so wanted to relate to his people that he allowed nothing to separate him from them.  He caught the disease and died at the age of 49.  His day is April 15.  When you are panicked about taxes on Tuesday, remember Fr. Damien!

Only a biblical radical would live and die this way.  This is the resurrection resume of so many of the saints of God.  No fanfare.  No riches.  No ‘man or woman of the year’ awards.  Only Christ at the right hand of God cheering them on, like Stephen.

Easter 3
Luke 24:13-35

Our gospel reading is one of the most profound of the resurrection stories in the gospels.  It goes from failed expectation and sadness to burning hearts to a revelation to a fever pitch of excitement with the exclamation ‘The Lord is Risen indeed!’

Two followers of Jesus are walking on a road going to a village called Emmaus.  They are sad, disappointed, confused and cannot stop talking about Jesus and his horrible and untimely death.  Who are these followers?  One is named Cleopas and the other is unnamed.  Eusebius identifies the unnamed follower as Luke the evangelist himself and Cleopas as the brother of Joseph, hence Jesus’ (step) uncle. Whether this tradition is accurate or not, these two followers know the Scriptures and have walked intimately with Christ.

I won’t recount the whole story again.  The two were unable to recognize Jesus because of their grief and because they were ‘kept from recognizing him,’ whatever that means.  What was it that turned them from grief stricken, disillusioned, skeptics to faith-filled believers with burning hearts?  It was Christ, revealing himself in a simple but powerful way.

Christ revealed himself through two things—the Scripture and the breaking of the bread.  It is interesting that in the book of Acts, which was also written by Luke, the church was a powerful community that was unified and also ‘devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the breaking of the bread.’  The same pattern, the same actions that for the early church made people long to be a part of them.

Things haven’t changed and they shouldn’t.  Jesus, the risen Lord, still reveals himself to us through the Scriptures, and in the breaking of the bread.

Let’s take those consecutively.  In the age of special effects, the Internet and glossy images, the Scripture seems to many in our world as a boring tome.  ‘What does Leviticus and King Hezekiah have do with me?’  Someone might say. Yet Scripture is sometimes referred to as a ‘roaring lion’ that invades our hearts and challenges our preconceived notions of the world.  With the travelers, Jesus pours the Scripture into them, revealing his fingerprints throughout the Law, the Prophets and the Writings.   The invading lion is Jesus, the Word himself.  Sometimes his words are gentle and comforting, other times they are intrusive and direct.  Henri Nouwen describes Jesus’ explanation of the Scriptures to the travelers on the road this way, ‘This was not a soothing conversation.  The stranger [Jesus] was strong, direct, unsentimental.  There were no easy consolations.  It even seemed that he pierced their complaints with a truth they might not have preferred to know…the stranger was not the least bit afraid to break through their defenses and to call them far beyond their narrowness of mind and heart.’  Even so, their hearts were set on fire.  Even to discover that the messiah first had to endure suffering before he was given glory.  Even to discover that the messiah’s followers would also have to follow the same path.

This is what Christ does to us as we find him in Scripture.  His opening words when he began to preach was ‘repent!’  Christ confronts us, lovingly, for us and for our salvation.  Through the Scripture he forms us, makes us what he wants us to be, and changes us, so much so that our hearts burn within us.

The book of Hebrews describes the Bible like a double edged sword that is so sharp and precise that it can cut in places where nothing else can.  Christ through his Word cuts sharply and precisely to heal us.

Lastly, Jesus reveals himself in the ‘breaking of the bread.’  The travelers recognized Jesus when he broke the bread and blessed it.  While this meal may not have been Eucharistic, all who read Luke’s account cannot help but think of the Sacrament as Christ distributes bread to Cleopas and his friend.

At Epiphany we take the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist very seriously.  One of the reasons we kneel or bow to the altar and the Aumbry (or Tabernacle) is because we believe the presence of Christ is in the Eucharist in a very mysterious, yet tangible way.  We believe that Jesus comes to us under the form of bread and wine, yet he is present in a real way.  Remember, every Sunday, you are approaching the very Presence of Jesus.  It is a healing Presence.  Commune with him, let him reveal himself to you in a new and powerful way.  Open your eyes and hearts to behold him.

There is another meaning, though, to the breaking of the bread in our gospel.  While Luke is alluding to the Eucharist, he also means to show that Jesus reveals himself in commonplace yet intimate settings.  Eating at the table with his friends was an ordinary, everyday thing to do, yet in an ordinary event an extraordinary thing happened:  their eyes were open.  In the book of Luke table fellowship is extremely important.  You remember that Jesus did much of his teaching around meals.  Meals in the ancient world were a sign of intimacy and family.  On the road to Emmaus, Jesus was seen clearly when he participated in what was most intimate.

We remember going home to mom or grandma’s and eating the home cooking.  For me every time I eat my mom’s enchiladas, I feel a sense of home because it reminds me of home.

Jesus was able to open the eyes of these two men through the bread and wine.  He was able to change them through something familiar

I keep going back, though, to the burning hearts phrase.  ‘Did not our hearts burn within us?’

When is the last time your heart burned?  Our faith is not a bore but an opportunity to live on the edge.

Jesus is in the life-changing business. He is able to make bread and wine his Body and Blood.  He is able to turn a bloody cross into a glorious resurrection.  He is able to turn death into victory.  If he can do all of these things, he can make sense of our lives.  He can make our cold hearts burn.  He can redeem our sin and brokenness.  He can restore relationships.  He can heal, forgive and change us.  The reason why?  Because he is risen.  ‘Because he lives, I can face tomorrow.  Because he lives, all fears are gone.  Because I know, I know, he holds the future.  And life is worth the living just because he lives.’  So goes the song I used to sing as a child.

There are times and places where God breaks in, to give us a glimpse of himself.  Where our hearts burn.  Where he makes the ordinary extraordinary.

St. Patrick’s Day kind of came and went since it was during holy week.  Remember Patrick evangelized the early Celts who became Christians.
The ancient Celtic Christians, who are the spiritual ancestors of us Anglicans talked about what they called ‘thin places.’  These are holy places or
incidents where heaven and earth meet each other.  Where the material and the spiritual come together.  Retreat leader and author Sylvia Maddox says this,

‘There is a Celtic saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller. A thin place is where the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted and one is able to receive a glimpse of the glory of God…In a thin place there is an immediacy of experience where words of faith become words of life. In this hallowed space and time heaven and earth for a moment are one.’

While Christ is revealed through Word and Sacrament, he also meets us in the everyday.  Our worship is a thin place.  We have had liturgies, especially in the last 4 or 5 months that I have strongly sensed the Spirit of God, where this aisle and this altar have for me been a ‘thin’ place, where I have felt my heart burn.  For me, church and retreat settings are more than likely to be ‘thin places.’

You might be different.  You might have a prayer corner at home or a place in the mountains that is a ‘thin place’ for you.  You might not think of any place as a ‘thin place’ but they are there if we could just discern them.

I’d have to say that at our Easter vigil we encountered a thin place.  All of us who were witnesses of the baptisms and the passion of the baptized, we can say our hearts were burning.

When is the last time your heart burned and pizza was not involved?  Our faith is not a dispassionate bore.  I heard Stan Perea say recently that 30,000 Americans leave church every Sunday and never come back.  He said, ‘they are not being chased out, they are being bored out!’

Our faith is not a bore but an opportunity to live on the edge…

Do you know what the most popular class at Harvard in the last two decades of the 20th century was?  “The moral example and teachings of Jesus.”  This was one of the few courses at Harvard that was not aimed at discrediting Christianity, but one that asked what Jesus would do with the moral conundrums of the day.  Students were genuinely looking for a Jesus that no one presented to them at church.  A Jesus who was relevant to their lives.  800 students signed up for it per year.

There is a hunger.  There is a harvest. There are those who want to see Jesus. There are those who want their hearts to burn for something other than the daily dose of work and entertainment.

Does your heart burn with the presence of Christ?  The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  Does your heart burn in telling others about Jesus?  Our faith is not a bore but an opportunity to live on the edge…

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, stay with us, for the night is at hand and the day is far spent;  be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread.  Grant this for the sake of your love.  Amen.

Easter Sunday 2008
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

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

A few observations about our gospel this morning.  First, it is very personal.  Remember we looked at the raising of Lazarus a couple of weeks ago.  Lazarus responded from the grave when Jesus called his name.  Read this chapter and the chapter on Lazarus side by side and you’ll see a parallel.  Here is Mary, confused and sad.  When Jesus appears to her, she thinks he is the gardener or someone who has carried away Jesus’ body.  There is no response from her until Jesus calls her name.  One simple word.  ‘Mary.’  And her life is forever changed.

Eugene Peterson writes, “The man asks her the same question as the angels, and she gives the same answer.  Then he speaks her name: ‘Mary.’  She turns to face him, her tear-blurred eyes now clear.  She sees Jesus, and she answers, ‘Rabboni.’” a term of great reverence and intimacy, as if to say, ‘my dear teacher.’

There is a difference between a faith that is cultural or a faith that is based on a few curious encounters with God once and awhile–and a real, living relationship with the living Christ.  We can say ‘happy Easter’ and miss out on a life giving relationship with Jesus.

Secondly, the resurrection, and really the gospel itself is all about second chances.  Not Jesus’ second chance, mind you, but ours.  Jesus did the work of redemption.  Jesus conquered death on our behalf.  But he is also there with forgiveness and love on his heart.  You remember that Peter denied Jesus three times while Jesus was in his darkest hour.  Each of the four gospels mention Peter as one of the first of the disciples to believe.  He wasn’t entirely convinced right away, of course, but he began to believe in the face of his own misery and guilt.  But John records a unique conversation with the risen Lord and Peter’s full restoration.

Do you want a fresh start?  Have you been wandering in every direction but towards Jesus?  He is there to restore you, to renew you, and to give you the opportunity to turn the reigns back over to him.  Today is the day of salvation.  Today is the day where all things are made new.  Why not make this a new beginning by giving your heart and life to Christ.  Sometimes his presence is unexpected.  Sometimes he takes us places we may not understand.  But in Christ is purpose, in Christ is life!

Lastly, the resurrection of Jesus is a challenge to everything.  It is a challenge to our notion that politics, or science, or whatever is best in humanity as the answer to the problems of this world..  It is a challenge to our assumption that God does not intervene in this world.  It is challenge to our moral life (or lack thereof).  There are those who, in the name of sounding deep, try to say that whether Jesus was raised or not doesn’t really matter.  Whether Jesus physically rose is irrelevant.

Marcus Borg has said, “I now see Easter very differently.  For me it is irrelevant whether or not the tomb was empty.  Whether Easter involved something remarkable happening to the physical body of Jesus is irrelevant.  My argument is not that we know the tomb was not empty or that nothing happened to his body, but simply that it doesn’t matter.  The truth of Easter, as I see it, is not at stake in this issue.”

The writers of the gospels, the Christians of the last 2000 years, all of us who have shown up today take issue with Borg’s statement.  The gospel writers are insistent in their narratives that Jesus rose in a flesh and blood resurrection .  Jesus eats.  You can touch him.  He is physically real.  He is no ghost or phantom or spirit in the sky.  Yet he is so much more.  The challenge of Easter is to believe in this Jesus who rose again.  It is to see that if he is risen, everything changes.  He is available for a real relationship.

C.H. Dodd said, “now that he is no longer visible to the bodily eye, faith remains the capacity for seeing his glory.”  What is faith?  It is a matter of relationship, a matter of ‘investing everything in the person of Jesus Christ.’  There is no place for neutrality when it comes to the person of Jesus.  The resurrection invites, actually demands, a response.

What will your response be?  In many ways, we are like the first disciple who peeked into the empty tomb.  Tradition says this is John himself.

John simply looked in and believed.  His faith was not naive, for he saw Jesus crucified.  In fact he was the only disciple who did not flee the scene.  As you remember, from the cross, Jesus handed over his mother Mary for John to care for.

But John simply peeked into the tomb and be believed, even before he saw Jesus personally.  We were not there on Easter morning.  We simply have the word of faithful believers throughout the ages who have proclaimed, ‘Christ is Risen!’

Our challenge is to have faith, not naive faith, but faith that recognizes the suffering of Christ and the suffering of the world, but a faith that will acknowledge that the resurrection changes everything.  Jesus is not dead, he is with us always, raised by the power of God and the power of God alone.  As Eugene Peterson says, ‘resurrection is not available for our use.  It’s exclusively God’s operation.’

I hope this day is more than a cultural nicety or a chance to eat a nice lunch.

If Christ is Risen, risen indeed, we all have to give account.  But if he is risen.  Everything changes.  ‘Alleluia, Christ is Risen!’