December 24 -- Verticle Nativity (Christmas Eve 2020)

“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given…”

Friends, grace to you and peace this Christmas Eve,

Grace is what we need right now, isn’t it?
And Peace...not peace that the world talks about, but when Christians say “grace and peace,” that’s God stuff.  That’s God’s deep and abiding peace, that resides far beneath the surface...

Some years ago I got to go to Rome in January to study and visit Early Christian sites.  It was thanks to Dad, who’s got a good friend Jim, who’s also a pastor and a passionate scholar on the 1st Century Early Church in Rome.  Jim is always leading trips to Rome, and Dad was always inviting me to join them.  And 5 years ago, I finally did!  The trip was amazing; I’d love to go back someday, I hope you all can go there someday too…(btw, ok to mourn even at Christmas time)  

Anyway, I bring my Rome adventure up again this good evening because Rome in January is absolutely filled with nativity scenes.  

The great Francis of Assisi is credited with the Christmas nativity, assembling manger scenes — whether it’s in-home or in-church, indoor or outdoor, realistic or creative, live or little figurines — any and all...so that children, in particular, could better learn and understand the Christmas story.  

And how true it is!  It’s the classic object lesson!  I wonder how many of you might have had/have a special nativity scene that you got to arrange or watch each year grow in the weeks of Advent.  I know that was formative for me growing up, and something I always looked forward to.  I remember on Christmas Eve the tradition at home of bringing out all the baby Jesus’ that had been hidden all through Advent.  And in church, on Christmas Eve, it was a special honor to begin the service each year with a child in the congregation carrying the precious figurine of the baby Jesus up the aisle and placing it ever so reverently into the manger.  I seem to remember this clink as the porcelain Jesus touched the porcelain manger.  After 4 weeks of joyful Advent waiting, the first true bell of Christmas!  

Anyway back to my trip to Rome in 2015:  There were nativities everywhere, called “presepe”, harkening me back to my childhood joys...and also offering new insights...  

One church that was actually physically connected to the “domus” where we were staying, had this wonderful, dimly lit room off of the sanctuary, and it was just filled with nativity sets, presepi, probably 2 dozen different displays spread around the room, with some choral Christmas music playing from a small speaker.  Open to the public around the clock to enjoy—great for those of us with jet-lag.

They were all such intricate arrangements, way more characters than just the stars of the Christmas pageant!  Figurines were camped out and hidden all through these complex landscapes and creative designs, like vast model train sets:  Grottos and tunnels and tiny lights and flowing water...just tickling the imagination.  

You had to walk around each display in order to see everything.  And often, it was a bit of a challenge to find Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus in the midst of it all.  I think that was intentional.

And some displays were multi-leveled.  

One I remember in particular, told a very clear story to me.  Three levels.  The top level had these armored Roman guards up above, on the top level, standing among white Roman columns; some Roman senator-types lounged on steps around a real fountain bubbling and trickling into a tiny opening…

Then your eye follows the trickle down to the middle level where regular folks are living, it’s a home scene, and a merchant with a cart, and a children playing in the street.  You explore the happy moments and then wonder, wait, where are they?  

The water keeps trickling down to the lowest level and finally you see a tiny baby, a humbly dressed Mary and Joseph, some young shepherds, both male and female, all huddled over the animal feed box.  You had to squint a little bit to see them because there wan’t much lighting down there.  I think had to turn on the flashlight on my phone, but there they were:  

God’s deep and abiding grace and peace, that resides far beneath the surface, levels below the power and glory of the day, even below the beauty and happiness of the neighborhood scenes.

I was so struck by this — clearly: years later...and this year 2020...I’m remembering it — I think in part, because I tend to imagine that holy night, this holy text in Luke 2 on a horizontal plain.  You know, the more characters there are, the wider the frame [nativity in the narthex that took up half the room].  But this was the opposite, it was vertical and narrow, multi-leveled.  Jesus, who the angels above sing about, is born down below:  God’s deep and abiding peace resides far beneath the levels of power and glory, even quaint happiness.  
Friends: that’s way more in line with the Gospel of Luke...the vertical nativity.

Who are the Roman soldiers pressing down on you?  Enforcing peace, more in a “shut up and take it” approach (Pax Romana) leagues away from that divine peace of God, found stories below.  What are the Roman columns in your life, in our world? — the structures that prop up and maintain the status quo, but leave so many buried...buried in debt, or sorrow, or fear?  Hidden at the bottom?  Who are the lounging senators in your life?  Comfortable and jovial, polite, eloquent and smart (in a way), but in their privileged comfort totally oblivious to what’s below, to where the water trickles?  

Jesus loves all of them too, by the way.  Maybe that’s you?  This is land of senators and soldiers, after all.  Jesus comes to be with all of them, with all of us...if we’re feeling pretty comfortable too.  But friends, in Luke’s vertical nativity story, this Jesus comes from the lowest places.  That’s where he sleeps, swaddled and silent.

And the everyday folks in the middle level?  Not rich, not poor, the neighborhoods, the children playing, the marketplace cranking on, the schools and shops and churches, the very real fears and illnesses of the middle level.  Addiction and abuse.  Adultery and anxiety.  Everywhere the water flows.  Jesus gets in there too:
Jesus sits in the homes, eats at the tables, kneels at the bedsides.  And always centers the children.  But comes from beneath.  Born below.  Sleeping on straw.

And made known first to shepherds.  The nightshift.

Friends, [silently] this is our God.  

So deeply imbedded in the underbelly, the gutters below.    Where there’s hardly a drop left.  See, that lower level, is  not just a romanticized Christmas poverty, beautiful in its simplicity: no, it’s dirty down there, it’s bars and brothels, it’s black lives that have endured bloody beatings and bully sticks.  It’s the edges, the places people go when they have no hope, or are where they never had a choice, born by a dumpster, in the stench of an alley, and trying to climb out.  Many of us might have to squint a bit to find this Jesus.  But follow the trickle down.

And be assured that he’s there, that he has arrived, that today is born in the city of David, the nowhere shepherd outpost of Bethlehem…
    That’s where the Shepherd of the World is born!  
The one who guides us to green pastures, and cool waters, where everyone has enough, where healing and redemption abound, where the crooked road is made accessible to all, and the sword of empire and brutality is bent into a gardening tool to plant and feed hungry people.  Where evil and death is conquered at the last, and where forgiveness of sin and new life grows like a tiny sprig from a stump.  This one from below changes everything.  

“Change shall he bring/chains shall he break...his law is love and his gospel is peace…”

This one from the scandalous under-belly spends his ministry in body on earth making level the scenes: turning the vertical into the horizontal!  Flipping the display on its head, rearranging the whole thing, molding a new landscape, where the mighty and glorious are brought down, and the downtrodden are lifted up.  (That was his mother’s song.)  And all may see it together!  (That was Isaiah’s song.)  Jesus sets the characters, even the planets in their places.  And everyone is gathered at the center, in the middle, and included — everyone fed, everyone housed, everyone clothed, and treated with dignity and inoculated with hope and new life.  Including you.

This is our God, from below, with us now.  Changing the entire scene, and offering anew that deep grace and peace...this holy night and always.

[sing] “And you, beneath life’s crushing load,
whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with painful steps and slow:
look now for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing;
oh rest beside the weary road
and hear the angels sing.” 

Amen.

April 12 -- Resurrection of our Lord (Easter Sunday)

They came looking, and he wasn’t there.  They’re told to go to Galilee...and the risen Jesus meets them, meets us, en route!

Grace to you and peace this Easter morning from our risen Jesus Christ who rocks the earth, appears before us en route, whose feet we grab onto, who we worship and praise, right where we are, with both great fear and joy, who raises us with him, and tells us to go to Galilee!  AMEN.

What’s this business in the text with Galilee on Easter morning?  Where is Galilee?  Jesus says I’ll meet you in Galilee. Galilee was the region (not a city or town) the area (like NoVa or the DMV or SoCal or the Hill Country or the Blue Ridge or up North or down South) it’s where Jesus and all the disciples were “from”.  Galilee is where Jesus came up, where he called the disciples, where he preached the sermon on the mount, where he fished, where he ate, and rested, and healed, and worked and played….Galilee was where they were all from...

Mary and Mary were looking for his body, dead in the tomb, but Jesus was alive and well and headed to the Galilee.
—
What’s your Galilee?  Where are you from?

I don’t mean, necessarily, the town of your birth or your childhood.  That would mean Houston is my Galilee (or the fjords of Norway).  I mean more like the region of mind and heart where you’re from, where you work, where you eat, where you sleep and fish and make friends...
Where do you live?

Where’d you come from?  Go back there.  Go back to that region of mind and landscape of heart.  Go back to that place.  Be there...because...“There,” the angel says, “you will see Jesus.”  Go back to where you came from...

Go back to your basement office, back to your Zoom meetings, back to the baking tray, back to driver’s seat, back to that project you were working on, back to the keyboard, back to the yard work, back to the news headlines, back to caring for your children and parents, back to retirement, back to school; go back to where you came from.  Only now, Easter people, you will see Jesus there!  Right there in your home, right there where you’re from.

I think we’ve all come from a place of great sorrow, frustration, even incredible pain lately.  Maybe you’re coming from boredom these endless quarantine days.  Maybe you’re coming from a place of being overwhelmed.  Stress takes its toll on the body: for some, more stress than ever.
—
This Easter Gospel ironically sends us back there.  The resurrection doesn’t just take all the bad stuff away.  Remember: Galilee isn’t all peaceful rolling hills; there’s lots of sorrow, grief and pain back there in Galilee!  Had some friends visit Galilee a few years ago: there’s blood shed in those valleys.  It’s a place drenched in sorrow.  But go back there, the angel says.  Don’t run from it.  Don’t ignore it or push your grief or frustration away, or bury it, or keep it locked up in the tombs of your hearts and souls.  Go back there.  Only now...[slowly] you’ll see Jesus there.  “That’s what he promised. Remember?” the angel says.

Maybe you’ve come here today from a place of loneliness…
or worry about the future or regret about the past or overwhelming anger.  Sisters and brothers, friends in Christ, Jesus has already gone ahead of us to those Galilees, and will meet us there!  So you can go back there now too.  We no longer have to hide from those things that bring us down, even those things that drive us into the grave!
Because Christ is alive, because Christ has conquered death and the grave, now we can even go there, face our Galilees, and find Christ right in the midst of them!

Those brave women in the story (interesting — that the men in the story froze, they became like dead men, scared to death) but the women followed the angel’s directions, even though they were scared too — says they were filled first with great fear and then joy.  In other words, they were humble, honest (Lent) and hopeful.  Humbly and honestly, filled with both fear and joy, go to your Galilee.

Let’s not be like the men in this story — frozen, scared to death — let’s be like the women: humble, honest and hopeful.

We go now from this Easter morning — this first sun rising of 50 days of Easter mornings, 7 weeks of the Easter season, friends! — with both fear and joy, humbly, honestly, hopefully.

Only now when you go to Galilee, you will also see Jesus there.  Jesus right in the midst of the pain, Jesus right in the midst of our worry, Jesus right in the midst of our regret or our anger.  Jesus right in the midst of what we thought was total isolation, even death.  Because of the resurrection, because he shakes the cosmos, rocks the earth and rises from the tomb, because he lives eternal, because “thine is the glory, risen conquering Son” and he has promised never to leave us, we never have to “go there” [pause] to “Galilee” alone.

The resurrection doesn’t promise a painless, sorrow-less happily ever after, just rainbows and Easter egg candy all the day long, all our earthly lives long.  No, what the resurrection of Jesus Christ means is that we never have to go through all that alone...even and especially death itself.

And we never have to consider ourselves unloved or unforgivable ever again.
—
Let’s go share that Good News with our lives!  The angel and Jesus don’t just tell the women to go to Galilee: they both add another command: “go...and tell”!  How about we share this Good News too, not just make it our little secret (shhh...Jesus Christ is risen, and we never have to go it alone again, but don’t tell anyone.)  No, our lives now tell the story — that Jesus through his life, death and resurrection gives us, all of us, forgiveness without end, love and hope with out boundaries, mercy overflowing, peace beyond all human understanding, life abundant and joy...even and especially now, amid a global pandemic, pain and fear and sorrow all around, death on our doorstep perhaps now more than ever — and still we sing:

“Al-le-luya, Christ is arisen! Bright is the dawning of the Lord’s day: (love v3) Gather disciples in the *evening* suddenly Christ your Lord appears: ‘Look it is I, your wounded Savior. Peace be with you and do not fear.”

—


Parker Palmer in his book Let Your Life Speak has a chapter entitled “Back to the World” where he talks about leadership not as egocentric and immodest, loud out front, self-serving leadership but rather...leadership = being who God has made you to be.  He says: “If it is true that we are made for community, then leadership is everyone’s vocation...even I,” he writes, “a person unfit to be president of anything...have come to understand that for better or worse, I lead by word and deed simply because I am here doing what I do.  If you are also here, doing what you do, then you also exercise leadership.”  Let your life speak.

Go back to Galilee...and tell everyone “Christ is risen” with your life, with your words and deeds, with your being who God has made you to be.  How would you specifically say with your life, with your doing what you do, that “Christ is risen indeed”?

Go to Galilee, the angel says. There you’ll see Jesus, and, hey, tell others with your life.
—
And then the surprise (it gets even better!): OK, we’re go back, got it, be who God made us, got it.  They hadn’t even started that long journey, and as they’re just starting on their way, as they are en route, Jesus meets them already and says, “Greetings!”

And the women worship him.  (That’s what we’re doing this morning.)  Here in this place Jesus is finding us en route, on our way back to our Galilees!

I want to ask you to write about and talk at the dinner table or post your answer to this question (take some time with it this week, this new, 7-week season of Easter)

“Where in your Galilee did you see the risen Christ today?”
Write that somewhere in your house.  Answer that every day.
Where did Jesus interrupt you en route?...and say ‘Greetings!’

Friends, with both fear and joy, I proclaim to you that Jesus is with us, through thick and thin.  It’s interesting: only in Luke’s Gospel does Jesus ascend at the end, up into the clouds.  All the other Gospels, Jesus never leaves the earth...Jesus stays right here.  And today in Matthew, Jesus keeps his feet planted firmly on the ground, and specifically in “Galilee”.  I love that scene of the women grabbing his feet and worshiping him, worshipping Jesus, grabbing onto to his firmly earth-planted feet, not lifting up into the clouds, and no longer elevated and nailed to a cross, Jesus is down here with them, us, you.

And sisters and brothers, friends in Christ, Jesus has also gone ahead of us, not ahead, up, up into the clouds, but ahead, across the land into the Galilees of our every day lives.
The Gospel gets local.  Jesus who is named Emmanuel, which means God-with-us at the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, stays true to his name in the very last chapter, where he says, in Galilee, “Lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.”

Christ is alive, and the the only place he’s going now is right back into our realities, right back into our everyday lives, right back to Galilee.  Alleluia!  Amen.

November 10 -- Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

Well, we are coming into the ‘season of questions’:  questions around the Thanksgiving table, questions around the Christmas dinner table.  Many times those questions are lovingly asked, as family and friends re-unite and catch-up and check in:  “Well, can you tell us about life in the big city?  How are classes going? What new projects are you working on?”  

You know when you get asked a genuine question, how the asker truly wants to learn and hear more because they care about you and are genuinely interested in you, and what you have to say.  Open-heated questions.  

And then there are other questions...questions that are not bolstered with a backdrop of support or any clear intention of loving curiosity and concern or excitement.  These are mean-hearted questions.

Have you ever been asked a mean-hearted question? — Questions that are meant to “catch” you or point out some shortcoming?  Questions that are really just meant to embarrass you, even as they might be skillfully worded to make the asker look totally innocent, even well-intentioned?  Sometimes ridiculous scenarios are created just to see how you’ll react or respond.  Again, questions that are just trying to make you look bad.  I’m afraid these kinds of questions can show up during the holidays too, during this season of questions, and throughout the year as well.

They could even be the exact same examples I just gave...but the tone is so different.  “So tell us about life in the big city.”  (clear disdain for a location or choice you made to move away)  “How are classes going?” (knowing full well that you’re not in school at the moment, unlike other siblings) “What new projects are you working on?” (hinting at some past failures or a pattern of jumping from thing to think without finishing) 

Some questions, friends in Christ, are just cruel.

Ahhh, pay attention to questions these days, and in this quickly-approaching holiday season.  (And pray for God always to be on your/our lips and in your/our heart, as you/we both ask questions and respond in the coming days.)

--

Jesus, once again, is experiencing the latter forms of questions here in our text — the kinds meant to embarrass and “catch”.  And certainly a ridiculous scenario (even to ancient ears).  You can almost hear the cruelty to the Sadducees’ tone.  

But Christ, once again, uses their mean-heartedness to teach us a lesson about God and offer a vision of justice and peace.  Often the asker of the cruel question has no desire to learn, and I wonder if the Sadducees never learned from Jesus’ response.  But we we get to.  Two thousand years later!  We get to look with fresh eyes and consider Christ’s response.

“Whose wife will the woman be?” they asked.

And Jesus responds with a vision of heaven: In God, that is, in heaven, a woman will not be passed down like an object, from brother to brother.  In God, everyone is valued fully — the text says, they “will become like angels”.  In God, no one is cast aside or passed along crudely.  In God, mean-heartedness and cruelty is no more.  Tears and pain are no more.  In God, dying is no more.  Jesus gives us a glimpse of heaven.  Can you imagine?  I hope that you can!  And that these strange ideas in this text today might even give us direction and instruction for how we live now.  What would it look like to lift others up like angels?!  (And let our selves be seen too...as angels?!)  That’s the image in Luke here!  Do you see yourself as an angel?

Are we capable of seeing and treating each other as angels?  

Each person that walks into this church this next week, can we welcome them as angels?  What if you envision each person who comes into your business or classroom, or sits at the cafe table next to you or waits at the stoplight across from you...as an angel?!  Not just someone to be passed by, passed down, passed over, like the widow in the Sadducees scenario.   But angels.  

(Maybe their example is not that ridiculous, after all, when we think about how carelessly we can overlook one another because we’re always in such a hurry, or suspicious, or actually somewhere deep down believe we’re better than someone else, that they’re not worthy of angelic dignity...)

This text is a wake-up call, friends in Christ.  To see our neighbors, to see strangers in our midst, to see family members and community partners … not just as fellow human beings … but as angels!  Talk about resurrection!  Christ lives (“I know that my redeemer lives”) and so do we...and not just as mere humans but, in Christ, we live as angels, like angels, for one another and for this hurting planet!

Friends, we can glimpse, we can live into a bit-o-heaven even here and even now, even in these mean-hearted days! Our God is a God of life and is calling us to open our eyes and our hearts even now.  This new life is ours, and it’s not just for after we leave this earth!  

Our God is a God of the living, a God of “the now”.  And this God has come near to be with us...in wine and water and wheat and wherever God wants to show up!  This community, this congregational meeting today, this neighborhood, this city, even about this Capitol Beltway!  

This God of the living has chosen to come along side us, and so we start living anew today — Open-hearted.  Interested and caring.  Noticing others, slowing down to appreciate the angels all around us!  This is our call.  

This is grace again, showered down on you and on me.  Thanks be to God.  Christ will come...and Christ is here now.  AMEN.

June 2 -- Seventh Sunday of Easter

How’d you like Jesus’ prayer here?  I sometimes struggle John’s Gospel, because I think it’s hard to follow some of Jesus’ words… “I in them and you in me and we one and they one I in them you us we he they…”  I loose track of all those pronouns.  But here’s the bottom line of the loving prayer that Jesus prays:  that Christ is in and with us, and that we’re together.  

Isn’t that beautiful?  And it’s easy to make fun of...

It reminds me a bit of something I’ve heard from loved ones who are tough to get a gift for, “I don’t want any ‘thing’ for my birthday, I just want us to be together, I just want us all to be together.”  Heather’s said this before...and clarified, “I don’t want to be sent away from the family, to a spa for the day or a retreat alone: I just want us all to be together.”  My dad talked this way a lot also...

Of course there’s no “just” about it, like it’s something easy or flippant.  It’s a bold desire.  How hard it is for families to “be” together, even when it’s possible physically.  So much strife amid families, so much history, and pent up bad/sad memories.  So many ongoing disagreements...on philosophies of parenting, or on politics or religion, or life choices.  It’s so hard to “just” be together, in peace, isn’t it…

And yet there are those among us, in this world and in our communities, who continue to call us back together — not idly and dreamily, but boldly and lovingly, calling us back to the fold, back to the community, back to the earth, back to a healthy life and a full life and a life together.  They’re like New Testament prophets encouraging us:  Stay together sisters and brothers in Christ, live kindly and peaceably with one another.  Love one another.

This is what Jesus prays for us today...and far beyond just our immediate family to come together.  Jesus too prays (boldly not dreamily), “I want the family to be together, in peace, and I’m going to be there too.  I’m not going anywhere,” Jesus says to us.  “Don’t send me off to some spa or retreat in the clouds.  I’m staying right here with you, no matter what you have to say about.  I’ll be here in water and word, wheat and wine.  I’ll be here in the faces of both friends and strangers alike.  I’m not going anywhere,” Jesus tells us today. 

Christ. Is. Here. Today.  Loving us, friends.  Praying for us.  (Not sure we think of Jesus praying for us, but here it is, today in the Gospel of John.)  And Christ isn’t going anywhere.  Praying that we come together, cross the divides, have the tough conversations, and greet one another in peace and joy. 

—

I want to shift over to this First Lesson that Michelle read from Acts...because there we have some pretty graphic imagery of family not coming together, of family bickering, not just that, but family hurting each other:  great story from Acts!

Paul and Silas...get annoyed...cast out “the spirit of divination”...upset the business establishment...upset the way things are done.  That’s Part 1 of this account. 

Then they get thrown in prison.  And here’s where we see glimpses of God working and bringing the most unlikely of people together:  the prisoners and the prison guards.  My friend’s dad was a prison guard, and I’ve heard and can certainly imagine that it’s rough in there.  That’s understatement, right?  And yet the other stories I’ve heard, kindnesses that take place, perhaps few and far between.  Perhaps not.  That’s the Spirit working in the unlikeliest of places.  People crossing the divides.  And that’s what happens in this reading for today.  Paul and Silas (the prisoners), befriend and even baptize the prison guard and his whole household!  

They even stay after an earthquake sets them free!

And can you see Jesus‘ prayer almost hovering over this whole scene?  Like when 2 brothers finally reconcile after years of fighting.  Like when 2 sisters finally have the tough conversation that ends in happy tears and a long embrace.  

Have you ever seen this in your own life?  It’s rare.  

And like in the text, sometimes it takes a disaster, like an earthquake, to catalyze the reconciliation, but when peace finally comes into a family’s (or a congregation’s or a community’s) dynamic, it is no small moment.  When after years of being at each others throats, calling each other names, arguing and fighting, or going long spells without ever even talking, when finally peace comes and settles into a family’s dynamic...there’s Jesus‘ prayer for unity and peace and presence, hovering over the whole scene.  It’s no small thing.  It is a gift.  Pure grace.

Friends in Christ, here in our final week of the Easter Season,  here at the beginning of summer, here at the end of one chapter and the start of another, God is here.  And God’s not going anywhere.  God through Christ prays for us today.  Prays for love, longs for us to reconcile with one another, to forgive one another, as we have been forgiven.  That’s the big Christian question, I believe:  

“HOW’S FORGIVENESS GOING FOR YOU?”

     (you forgiving others, yourself...you receiving forgiveness...)  

God is here as we struggle with that, holding us like a strong parent, calming us down.  As we struggle to shed our anger and our resentment, our bitterness and our remorse.  Christ isn’t going anywhere, off to a heavenly spa in clouds.  Christ is right here with us as we struggle.  Christ is right here with us in our pain, in our loneliness.  Christ is right here in our both in our joy and especially in our sorrow.  

This God knows pain (remember the Good Friday cross), this God comes and waits (and wades) with us through our pain.  This God holds us, and gives us hope, gives us peace...  

And we are made one; we are together...this day.

In Jesus’ name.  AMEN.

April 21 -- Resurrection of our Lord, Easter Sunday

Growing up in Houston TX, we always used to have a 2-week Spring Break: during Holy Week and this next week after, i.e. the first week of this 50-day Easter Season.  

Back then, for me, this schedule always made the first week of Spring Break really about church, at least later in the week and at night.  We’d go to all the services.  I would often go home scared after Maundy Thursday, even crying myself to sleep because they did such a good job at recreating the story for us, slamming the book, running out into the darkness, I remember pondering, even as a little boy, the ways that we all betray Jesus.  Made me cry.  And Good Friday was always somber, even at home, we were pretty quiet all day.  Mom would always relay the events to us like they were unfolding in real time.  About 9 o’clock, “This is when Jesus was taken before Pilate.”  At about 10 o’clock, “This is when Jesus was given the crown of thorns, and brought in front of the crowd.”  At about 11, “Ah, this is when they shouted ‘crucify him, crucify him!’...And now he’s started walking up the path.”  She rehearsed the events like a biblical scholar, even though later in life, I never found those times matching up...didn’t matter.  She was remembering the story.  She was putting that Passion story together for us.  

Saturday was a quiet day too.  Although, Saturday was when we started packing our suitcases...  

I always had trouble sleeping on Holy Saturday night.  I’d go to bed actually thinking about Jesus being raised from the dead— kind of confusing, creepy, as well as anticipatory and exciting.  We’d always be really exited about all the festivities of Easter morning.  Even more, to be honest, we’d go to bed excited and thinking about Easter Sunday afternoon, when we would be packing our little station wagon and driving out across East Texas, into Louisiana.  We aimed to get all the way to Biloxi, Mississippi on Easter Sunday night.  You see, we were going to Disney World for the rest of spring break — not every year, but those few years we headed for Disney were the best as a kid!  

What I’m thinking about this Easter morning is remembering.  When I would finally fall asleep on Holy Saturday, somehow in the haze and dreams of sleep I would forget what the next day had in store, even when I first work up on Easter Sunday!  All this good stuff -- honestly, between Easter at church and family and vacation, it couldn’t get any better -- and still I’d forget, for a moment, even when I’d wake up!  

Do you know that moment?  When you’re awake, but you haven’t yet come to?  When you haven’t yet remembered what’s in store for you today?  That moment can last a few seconds, like it did for me as a kid...and that moment can last for years:  [pause] 

How we can forget.  We can forget the stories that have brought us to this point.  We can forget the blessings that are right in front of us.  We can forget the relationships that mean the most to us, like we’re in some kind of haze.  We can forget the words that matter, and give life, because of all the words that try to drain us of life and joy.  We can forget the forgiveness, the grace, the peace, and the invitation that God plainly and lovingly has for us this Easter morning and always.  

If the opposite of forgetting is re-membering, then maybe we should call forgetting “dis-membering”.  Everything falls apart.  Isn’t that what seemed to happen in our Passion narrative of Holy Week?  Everything falls apart, everything is dis-membered.  [pause]  But then there’s moment, that light that sparks when we come to:  “Oh, yeah!!”

The disciples in our Easter story today were awake — they were out and about even, the women disciples namely were even up bright and early...but they hadn’t come to yet.  The women at the tomb had forgotten/dis-membered, the other 11 disciples had forgotten/dismembered, Peter himself was awake but dis-membered.  Easter...is the day and the season (50 days) of re-membering.  [Consider doing an activity of remembering during these 50 days of Easter — scrapbooking, or record some family stories, or review your bible stories (those are family stories too)… 

Remembering is Easter business, even more than eggs and baskets and bunnies, and dresses and ties! 

And it’s the angels call who us back to memory, and once again give us a new song.  Angels in Luke’s Gospel are always giving us a new song — Remember them at Christmas (“Glory to God in the highest…”)?

And today: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has risen.  Re-member how he told you?…”

Remember?  “Oh, yeah!!”  I love when our kids remember something right in front of us, because their eyes light up, and a smile grows across their face when they come to.   [And getting so jazzed, it’s always physical: shivering, jumping.]  “Oh, yeah!!” I’m sure that’s what happened to me too, when I woke up on those vacation, Easter mornings as a child.  “Oh, yeah!!”

This is what happens to us, when we respond, “Christ is risen indeed!  Alleluia.”  Our eyes light up, the smile creeps across our face.  “Oh, yeah!!”

Can’t you just see that happening to Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women who were with them?  “Oh, yeah!!!”  Excited!!  They ran out to tell the others.  Now, it didn’t take right away for the men [no comment].  They said it was an “idle tale”, a dream.  But eventually, I’m sure, it happened to them too.  “Oh, yeah!!” 

And can’t you just see it happen to Peter.  The smile didn’t go creeping on his face just yet:  with him, he ran back to the tomb and found the linen grave clothes thrown all over the floor.  And then he “came to”:  ”Oh, yeah!!!!”

Friends in Christ, Easter is about remembering.  Christ’s resurrection is about our being put back together by God.  The lightbulb goes on, and we are re-membered, as we remember.  (We are remembered by God, even as we forget.)  This is our God!  Conquering death so that we might be put back together.  Forgiving our sin, so that we may now turn and love one another, forgive each other in response.  This is our God!  Putting us back together.  Easter is about remembering.  So that we may go and tell our sisters and brothers who have forgotten, who have been forgotten; so that we may go to those places where dis-remembering has taken place.  [pause]  Where things have fallen apart, where lives are lost, and stories are lost, and joy is lost.  Christ rises from the grave so that stories can be told anew, lives can be restored, hearts can be put back together, and joy finds us forever more!

This grace and mercy, this new life is ours because of Christ Jesus.  The risen Christ is the spark that lights the fire of faith, the Easter fire that burns in our hearts and kindles our imaginations and our courage to go and be the disciples of Jesus for this new day.  The flame of love and welcome rises from this altar, waters of grace flow from this font, this book, this community.  We are the body of Christ.  

Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!  “Oh, yeah!!”

Now don’t forget it.  AMEN.