What Sheep Risk

Psalm 23

“Of course, we’ll have Psalm 23.” It’s often the first decision made about funerals.  It feels right: It’s traditional, helps us imagine paradise and the promise of dwelling in God’s house forever, and it’s familiar. So it’s an easy decision for a funeral, and it’s become a promise that we turn to when we face death or fear death — when we walk through that valley of the shadow in our lives — as well as when we grieve.

But hundreds of years ago, when the first Christian communities were adapting the beautiful Hebrew poetry of the Psalms to Christian worship, they linked the 23rd Psalm to baptism. To a sacrament of birth and renewal, hope and commitment.

Because this psalm, this poem, is life-giving, and it’s all about living the promise of baptism.

The baptized world is described in the shepherd psalm, in beautiful poetry: green pastures, quiet waters, a path of righteousness, rod and staff ready in our defense, anointed wounds and overflowing cups.  

It’s a vision of refuge, guidance, protection, healing and abundance — sign me right up! 

The darkest valley is part of the path, yes, and enemies are still in front of us - baptism isn’t a free pass - but the psalm proclaims confidence that we can face trauma and fear supported by the presence of God.

That’s the promise we come seeking in baptism, after all: the gift of our relationship with God that we nurture in Christian community, in prayer and worship and giving and celebration.

And it requires a promise from us, as well.

In the Episcopal Church today, as in many centuries of Christian practice, we “examine” the candidates for baptism, requiring them to declare in front of the faithful community that they renounce evil and turn to Christ.

“Do you put your whole trust in [Christ’s] grace and love?” we ask. 

“Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?”  

The Book of Common Prayer provides baptismal candidates with the necessary answer, a simple “I do” (we’ll also take “yes” if you forget to look at your book), but wouldn’t it be just as appropriate to answer those questions with the words: “The Lord is my shepherd, I need nothing more.”

That, after all, is a profound statement of faith. To claim God as my shepherd means to confess my absolute dependence on God’s guidance, to give up the desire and the illusion of control over my own destiny - to follow and obey.

And then there’s the second half of that statement, the “shall not want.” It’s better translated as I lack nothing, I need nothing. 

In a world full of advertising and stuff and social pressure, it’s a huge leap of faith to really, truly believe that I need nothing more - that I can’t find anything online, or in the mall, or in other people to make me even a little happier, better, or more secure.  

It’s a tremendous act of faith to truly put my whole trust in Christ’s grace and love. 

One of the most culturally familiar phrases we use in the church, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” is also one of the most counter-cultural truths we can proclaim.

So it’s the promise we ask from people who come seeking baptism.

We asked you this, too, at your baptism, by implication, even if you didn’t use these words. 

So as Christians, that’s a statement of how we live — or how we’re supposed to live, at least — and when we do it, it’s revolutionary.

Try praying this commitment all one day:
The Lord is my shepherd / I depend entirely on God (without backseat driving)

I shall not want / I need nothing more. Nothing.

Pray it at work and at home, in traffic, online, at the grocery or the mall. Feel the challenge of the tension between the demands of the world we live in, and the one we’re baptized into.

It isn’t easy, but there’s a sneaky promise in both baptism and the psalm that’s worth remembering when the familiarity and pressures of the world we live in make the world we’re baptized into seem hard to reach.

When we baptize someone, we sign them with a cross, holy oil that’s quickly absorbed into the skin and invisible, but still permanent:  “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

All these years after my own baptism, under sunburns and foundation and lines and acne and all the other things that happen to our faces, God can see that mark.

God has a claim on me that won’t let go, in spite of the fact that I regularly screw up the work of being a sheep and forget to depend on God.

The psalmist knew that kind of claim.

We’ve gotten used to hearing it as a sort of promise, that “goodness and mercy shall follow me” all my life, but more literally, it’s a bit more of a warning, a heads up:

that goodness and mercy pursue us, chase us, every day.

God’s claim on us just won’t let go, comes after us, whether we’re following the shepherd’s guidance or wandering out on our own.

It’s a risk we take, being baptized.

We risk being claimed by God, despite the fact that it’s easier, most days, to focus on the claims of family, work, and self. Risk depending on God, even when it’s more natural and more attractive to control our own days and destiny. We risk being pursued by goodness and mercy, disrupting our self-interest, our natural limits, and our limited attention, with gratitude and trust we probably weren’t even looking for.

It’s a risk we take in baptism, one we renew when we pray this psalm: risk being relentlessly pursued by grace, and it can change your life, and maybe even the world,

if you let it.

Ordinary

Luke 24:36-48

Do you have any favorite sayings of Jesus? Famous words, or ones you turn to?

Like: Be not afraid…Judge not, lest ye be judged…man does not live by bread alone…love your neighbor as yourself…

There are a lot of good ones: truths or instructions that have taken on a life of their own over the centuries since the gospel writers first shared them.

One of my favorite Jesus quotes is a lot more obscure than those - not likely to be in any top ten list - but it’s something we heard him say this morning: “Got anything here to eat?”

It is probably the most banal thing Jesus is ever recorded as saying.  

It’s a family kitchen question, not a church teaching, and it’s bizarrely disruptive. Every time I read or hear this story - a story of the disciples and Jesus in the first day of resurrection - I listen to the shock and doubt and confusion of the disciples, the initial reassuring, “really, it’s me” words of Jesus, and I come up short at the unexpected, oddly commonplace question right in the middle of awe and wonder: “Got anything to eat?”

It makes me laugh, every time, and sometimes it triggers a bit of tears.

Because that bizarrely normal moment is so familiar.

It’s what we do, after death, after the world ends: We eat. And we grapple with normal.

It’s not just that the casserole brigades spring into action around a tragedy. It’s the way life somehow goes on, requires our attention to boring everyday detail, even when going on feels wrong. And that’s grace.

In the face of death and upheaval, the dog still needs to be walked, the kids need to be fed, laundry doesn’t do itself, you still have to bring in the mail and pay the bills…

and that’s grace.

Because it is, in some way, the assurance that life does go on, that you are real, normal, in spite of how dislocated grief can make you feel.

It’s the ordinary that makes the impossible possible, and brings the extraordinary within reach.

Not just in loss, grief, and death, but in any deeply emotional upheaval, including joy - including resurrection.

On that long ago day in Jerusalem, when the recently buried and freshly risen Jesus stood among his friends, trying to reassure them and encourage them, no one actually believes he’s real.

The grief is more real - and it’s still grief even if Jesus is risen; we’ve still lost something tremendous by his death.

The fear is more real - after all, someone you see again after death is a ghost, or a zombie.

And even joy contributes to the sense of unreality, to the below-consciousness conviction that this is a hallucination, a dream, too good to be true, even with Jesus inviting you to touch him and feel the living flesh.

So Jesus asks for lunch. And he eats.

Common, ordinary, broiled fish: for common, ordinary hunger.

And suddenly, finally, he’s real again in the face of his friends’ astonished disbelief.

Has that ever happened to you?
Has Jesus ever been made real in your life by ordinary details?

I’ve been assured of Jesus’ presence by the offer of a midnight snack in a night of grief and turmoil. I’ve been moved from anxiety to trust in God when a stranger, unexpectedly, made me laugh. And I think I began to believe that I would really achieve my longing to be a priest when I realized how much paperwork I was doing for the cause.

It’s the sheer banality of it that works,

that makes it real,

that makes it grace,

that cracks the unbelievability of the extraordinary and anchors the impossible in the possible.

It makes you laugh, breaks the tension,

and lets us cope, even a little,

with death and resurrection.

When Jesus suddenly requested lunch, the atmosphere in that room full of disciples must have gone suddenly from trauma waiting room to family kitchen - and that, after all, is where most of the work gets done, right?

Jesus doesn’t come back just to make his friends feel better, or even to make them believe.

He comes - and eats - because there’s work to be done.

Resurrection needs witnesses. 

People who’ve experienced the reality of Jesus, found it powerful and believable, and will share their stories and do something about that experience.

Two thousand years ago, that’s a handful of recently traumatized disciples, suddenly grappling with the miraculous, made real by the need to grill more fish.

And when the impossible becomes possible to them, they go out and change the world.

Here and now, that’s you and me.

Few of us have to deal with resurrection every day, and if we’re lucky, the times when we have to grapple with death are far between, but our faith makes other demands on us, too, and some of those can be nearly as overwhelming.

We face a world where the news is full of war and oppression, where hunger and homelessness are on our doorstep - and God calls us to change things that can feel far beyond our reach.

Or in our private lives, illness and injury can devastate us. Small injustices happen at work and school, family challenges - “little” things - but they can be overwhelming when they are vivid and fresh in your own life.

So you, too, have probably felt something like the anxiety, doubt, hope, and sense of sheer impossible scope the disciples grappled with at the resurrection.

And when that happens in our lives, perhaps we should start with lunch.

With one action — ordinary, commonplace — one step that makes the impossible possible.

Last spring, Navy Admiral William McRaven spoke to the gradating class of the University of Texas - a speech that’s cropped up in my Facebook feed often - viral and persistent because of one thing he said:
“If you want to change the world, start by making your bed.”

Start with one task. One ordinary, commonplace thing.

Because one accomplishment leads to another.

And if it doesn’t, if nothing goes right and you have a miserable day, “you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.”

He learned it in Navy SEAL training. Six solid months of the impossible: of strain and doubt, facing challenges that you know are just impossible, but that ultimately become real, and make it possible to change the world.

So make your bed.

Eat lunch.

Make a pot of coffee…

In the Navy, as in the gospel, it’s the sheer banality of it that works, that makes it grace, and makes the impossible possible,

just enough, at least, that we, too, might change the world.

To Practice Joy

Mark 16:1-8 (Acts 10:34-43, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11)

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed, alleluia!

That proclamation and response should just spill off your lips today, automatically, joyfully, proudly. Peter and Paul both remind us today of just how important it is to proclaim Easter: to publicly, confidently announce the news that Jesus, dead and buried, is alive again; that we have seen that life, full of God’s power, and that this news saves both us and the world from all that we could ever fear.

It’s our job today to revel in the celebration and to share the joyful news as far and wide and positively as possible, so we surround ourselves with flowers and feasting and fanfares and chocolate.

Alleluia indeed!

But Mark tells a different story.

Mark’s story is about Easter when we are not confident, not proud, not joyful. Because Easter happens that way sometimes, even if you wouldn’t guess it from this cheerful, festive morning.

It’s sunrise on that other morning, early and sleepless, as Mary and Mary and Salome go to the tomb where their dear friend — their leader and their link to God on earth — has been buried, sealed away after the most painful and shameful death the occupying Romans can impose. 

Their task is neither peaceful or pleasant, but full of anxiety and obstacles:

How will we get past the great stone sealing Jesus in the tomb?

Will anyone help us? 

Will we hurt ourselves on that immovable rock?

They wonder as they go.  

They worry - until they see, suddenly, that the stone is already moved, and the dark tomb gapes open. Then the worry doubles. Nothing good can happen at an open grave.

The women creep cautiously to the entrance and peer in — or perhaps they rush inside on a surge of anger and adrenaline — to find Jesus vanished.  The one time they could count on his being where they left him - since death generally has that effect on bodies - and he’s absolutely gone.

There’s a man sitting there, though. Unmistakably a messenger of God, unusual and dazzling enough to throw you into awe and fear — if the women weren’t already reeling from enough shock and worry.  

He tries to soothe their alarm, offering the news that Jesus is not just gone, but risen, alive and ahead of them, not dead and lost - and gives them a message inviting Peter and the rest of the disciples to meet Jesus - to see him living and at work - in Galilee.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed, alleluia!

Mary and Mary and Salome are sent out to proclaim their experience of Easter, and to invite others to share it, just as you and I and all the church are reminded to do this morning.

But they don’t.

Mark’s last words in the story leave them - and us - hanging on the cliff: “They fled from the tomb in terror and amazement, and said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.”

Fear. Shock and awe. Speechless trauma. The emotions of Mark’s story are out of place in our bright celebration this morning, but they are right for Easter, too.

When resurrection happens to us, we don't always know it. 

When it's happening to us, resurrection often feels more like grief and fear that a bright and cheerful Easter morning. When God works life-giving transformation on the world and on us, the shock and anxiety may come first and strongest — even feel endless — but those sharp-edged moments are often the holiest Easter times, just as it was that long ago sunrise at an empty tomb.

Has that happened - is it happening - to you?

Are there dead ends in your life? Immovable stones blocking your way? Help you need, but can’t think where to find? 

That’s where God is already at work.

The promise of Mark’s Easter story is that where we are stuck and helpless, like the women on their way to the tomb, God is most stunningly and powerfully at work. 

When we are stunned by absence like the women at the empty grave — where there is loss, grief, emptiness and loneliness and betrayal in our lives — there too is the promise of Easter, like the message given to the women: 

Where we cannot see God, where we have lost our connection, God is reaching out to invite us to reunion, to meet again where Christ has gone ahead.

When we are voiceless, when change or shock or paralyzing fear or even unrealistic hope  robs you of your ability to choose your way, well, perhaps then your story is in God’s hands, not your own, just like the story of the women fleeing speechless from the tomb.

Mark’s story of anxious women, of resurrection washed in loss and fear, is the promise we need when God is actually bringing Easter into our lives in the same messy, anxious, disruptive way.

That’s why we practice joy this morning, and surround the story of shock and awe with festivity and flowers. We practice joy - we celebrate and feast and proclaim it now - because when resurrection is actually happening to us, joy can feel so far away.  

We practice joy now for the sake of the times we need it most.

So plunge in to this morning’s exultant jubilation. Rejoice in chocolate and bunnies and simple pleasures, in praise and thanksgiving and favorite foods. Laugh, weep with joy, have fun. 

This is our faithful obligation, our holy training, each Easter morning: to practice joy in all its forms as we remember Christ’s resurrection.

Exercise those muscles of celebration, because the world needs them — and you may need them — in those times when God is at work but the story isn’t finished, and we’re hanging on the cliff in terror and amazement.

Today we step off the cliff into light and joy, into the glory of Christ’s triumph.

Today we remember the promise and the truth that God can work resurrection even in our deepest pain.

So let’s throw ourselves into the joyful proclamation today: that Christ is risen, risen indeed. Throw our hearts into it so we can proclaim it with confidence and joy even in the face of dead ends, loss and fear.

Say it once more with me now:

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed, alleluia!

Betrayal

Mark 14:32-72

Have you ever felt betrayed?

If you’re lucky, it’s been a small betrayal - a co-worker or friend who just wasn’t what you had believed, a public figure who betrayed our hopes, the ordinary losses of innocence that are part of growing up.

Those betrayals don’t feel small when they happen, but they turn out to be, later.

Some betrayals, though, are fatal - to trust, to a relationship, even to life.

It’s that kind we are talking about today.

It’s that kind that we grieve today.

Good Friday is full of betrayals:

Judas turns Jesus over to the authorities.

Peter denies even knowing him, betrays their friendship, Jesus’ trust.

Today we grieve for those.

We listen or watch in horror as Jesus is sold out, then abandoned to his fate, by those he loved and led.

Today we remember with pain our own capacity to betray God’s trust,

to turn against God and one another in fear or greed or pain or indifference.

Tonight, as we hear Jesus’ story again, we face our own selfish or unthinking sin.

That’s one reason we face the cross together today:

because we all betray God from time to time. 

We do it alone, and we do it together, when we focus on other things, protect ourselves, duck responsibility, or stay silent.

So tonight we face the cross, face our own sins of betrayal, face the consequences,

and give thanks that Christ’s love is stronger than our failings, and that the pain and darkness of that death are filled with grace.

And then — sometimes — as we hear this story and face the cross, we face another betrayal, too.

Tonight, lurking in the cracks of the story, is the pain of feeling betrayed by God.

Judas and Peter both felt it.

One was lost when the Messiah he’d been counting on turned out to be a rabble-rouser, marginal and troubling, not the conquering king, bringing freedom and peace, that God’s people had been expecting for so very long.

The other was lost when the teacher and leader he counted on “gave up,” quietly submitting to derision and death - and exposing his friends to those same dangers! - instead of challenging the authorities and protecting his followers.

That happens to us, too.

We can be let down, even feel betrayed by God.

People die too young, despite our prayers and our love.

Life is brutally unfair, no matter how hard we work, how well we attend to Christ’s teaching, no matter how fair we try to be.

Pain increases even when we’ve prayed for relief;

sometimes we find ourselves alone with temptation or fear;

and mean or petty or horrifying things are done in God’s name by faithful people we thought we could trust.

That betrayal, too, is at the cross tonight.

And we have to face that, too,

admit the pain we’d rather deny,

and prepare to forgive our own hurt as we ourselves have been forgiven.

And again, as we face the cross,

we give thanks.

Thanks because Jesus’ faithfulness in the face of betrayal and death is a promise that we can never be wholly abandoned by God. We give thanks for the revelation of a divine love that is greater than anything we’d ever hoped or prayed from God - a love that cannot be broken by any betrayal, cannot be broken by death, or driven away by grief.

So as we face the cross tonight, face our sin and our pain,

we find ourselves also and always face to face with love,

and give thanks.