Pursued by Rest

Psalm 23; John 10:1-10

It’s taken me a long time to like the 23^rd psalm.

 

Psalm 23 is meant to picture paradise – or so my theological reading has told me – and Psalm 23 has offered comfort and assurance and hope to many of us at times of grief or other distress. 

But, for myself, I’ve almost never wanted to think of heaven or paradise as being “green pastures” or of myself as a sheep.  As a kid especially, my paradise preferences were mostly centered on a very good library and no mosquitos. Green spaces with still waters sound, well, buggy, to me. 

For most of my life, I’ve wanted heaven to be interesting, not quiet. 

And – so far as I could tell without having any very close acquaintance with them – both sheep and pastures look, overall, pretty boring.

 

So I wasn’t really prepared for it when, in the early weeks of my sabbatical, the 23^rd psalm started haunting me.

Phrases and fragments of it would just turn up in my mind, unexpectedly and uninvited.

Often those phrases would be attached to a tune – one of the many hymn settings of the psalm [or, most often, the setting we’ll hear the choir sing in a few minutes] ear-worming its way into my consciousness. 

References to the psalm turned up occasionally in the sabbath books I was reading, too, but mostly it was just images and words pushing up to the surface of my mind when I was trying to pay attention to something else. Or to nothing at all.

 

And gradually, I started to be glad of it.

I started to feel that those words signaled the presence of God here and now. Started to find those whispering threads of “quiet waters”; “I will fear no evil”, “I will lack nothing”, “you restore my soul” restful, reassuring, and comforting.

The words of this psalm felt true for me – or at least like I wanted them to be true for me – in a way I’d rarely felt before.  It felt, for the first time, important for me to find a place for myself, a way to belong, inside this image of paradise, and abundance, and trust, and enough.

 

Much of the time, for many of us, this psalm – with its poetry of protection, calm, security, and, especially, of wanting nothing – seems unreal and unrealistic. Very few of us are, in fact, usually resting beside quiet waters, absolutely free of anxiety and need. When we’re personally fairly content, we’re still largely immersed in a culture built on wanting more; where leaders win loyalty by defining things we should fear or hate; where we’re expected to strive, to keep reaching for more and better of anything or everything; where that striving is meant to be good, and rewarding, a source of pride, even. 

Much of the time, for many of us, no matter how attractive it might sound to rest in a quiet place for even a few minutes, that option just doesn’t seem to be available. Much of the time, for many of us, we not only can’t be sure that we have enough, or that we’ve done enough, but it’s easy to wonder if we can ever be enough.

 

That everyday reality for many of us is restless, insecure, anxious and untrustworthy – the opposite of the reality described in this psalm. 

 

That’s true for me, much of the time, even when I feel most confident in my faith, most confident in God.

So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that – for a substantial part of my sabbatical time – I felt like I was failing at rest. That I worried, often, that whether I was reading, or taking walks, or planning a trip to watch baseball, or trying to nap, or staring at the ceiling, I wasn’t accomplishing rest correctly, or sufficiently, or whatever.

 

Because rest is profoundly countercultural.

And the conditions that make rest possible – trust in one’s companions and environment, the assurance that we have (and maybe are) enough, that we are safe, well-guided and well-guarded, and cared for – the conditions that make rest real – are profoundly countercultural, too.

And I suspect that is exactly why we read this psalm.

Maybe why it was written in the first place. 

Most of human history, after all, is unstable and insecure, full of distrust, of both need and greed, where rest and renewal is a tantalizing dream always out of reach.

 

But the psalm and the psalmist invite us to step into this other reality. Into a true space of stability and sufficiency, of trust and protection and confidence and rest. A reality that exists right along with our other everyday realities. A reality many of us need.

An opportunity.

And, perhaps, a demand.

 

One of the books I took up in my sabbatical, in my time of trying to learn more about rest, grabbed hold of my soul and started to haunt me, a bit. Started to keep appearing in my mind unbidden, like this psalm has been haunting me.

 

Tricia Hersey, writing her manifesto Rest is Resistance, insists that rest is a defiance of evil, of the corrupting and destructive powers that insist that we are only valuable for what we can produce. And that to rest – even for a moment – is to seize, to acknowledge, the holiness of our bodies, our selves. 

 

And if rest is a way we reject evil, it’s not just an opportunity, not just an invitation. It’s an obligation. A commitment of our faith. Radical – and potentially risky, by the demanding, achieving, pushing standards of the world we live in – radical and holy and essential to our wholeness. Essential to our salvation and the redeeming of the world.

 

Jesus said – you heard him today – that he came that we might have life, and have it abundantly. The sheep and shepherd imagery link the reality described in the 23^rd psalm with Jesus’ identity, his self-described relationship to us as the good shepherd, and his mission – the giving of abundant life. 

 

Abundant life which disrupts and destroys the banal evils of striving and wanting and producing, of never trusting that we have, that we are, that God is, enough.

 

And – recognized as a means of defying evil – those green pastures and quiet waters and banquet tables of the psalm are not, as I once thought them, boring at all.
And not optional, either. 

 

Because the reality that this psalm describes is not passivity. It’s not indolent, monotonous “rest”, that’s a stepping out of the world.  Rather it’s a vibrant, life-giving, radically interesting trust that actively receives good and rejects evil in all the varied times and places of our lives. Trust that receives good and rejects evil in the times when we are supposed to feel threatened – in the presence of our enemies. That receives confidence and hope and rejects fear in the times when we are supposed to despair – in the valley of the shadow. Trust that receives renewal, and experiences gratitude and fulfillment, when we are supposed to be wanting – so that in all those places and times in our daily lives when we are surrounded by commercials and expectations and demands that we need more, do more, be more, achieve more – we are instead free to rest. In abundance and enough.

And even, perhaps, in rejecting the demands to need, do, be, achieve more, you and I may make the world more restful for others.

 

Psalm 23, I’m coming to realize, is not meant to be a someday image, for a heaven out of reach of our daily lives, but an insistent, essential picture of what the good shepherd calls us to live already, here and now. A picture of what participating in our own salvation, rejecting evil, seizing holiness looks like. A picture of the abundant life that will pursue us, calling your name, and mine, in the voice of the good shepherd, in a haunting phrase that slips in and out of your mind, until we, too, are part of paradise, of life-giving rest and salvation, here and now and always.

 

Not Looking

Luke 24:13-35

Nobody is really looking for Jesus.

Not in this story we just heard.

The two travelers, making their way out of Jerusalem that long ago Sunday afternoon, might be looking for answers. They might be looking for security, or a return to normal. Or they might be looking for nothing at all.

But they are definitely not looking for Jesus. 

After all, all the news and evidence and common sense they’ve got suggests that they will never see him again. 

The way Luke tells the story of the resurrection, Jesus’ friends discover that he’s gone from his tomb, and heavenly messengers say that Jesus is “risen” as he’d told them.  But there’s no suggestion that they’ll meet him again. No promise of reunion, or invitation to a rendezvous. And no Jesus showing up right outside the tomb to change everything.  

Jesus is risen, and it’s a miracle, but there’s no suggestion he’s coming back. 

So no, they aren’t looking for Jesus. Even though they are talking about him.

Which is not so different from how it is for you and me today, is it?

We’re talking about Jesus (at least, I am). And we’ve got no reason to expect Jesus, in person, to show up here, or wherever else we’re going today.
(I mean, we expect the presence of Christ, somehow, in church, but I suspect most of us are not looking for Jesus-in-person to stroll down the aisle and sit next to you in the pew when we came to church today. Or Jesus be in the pulpit to personally explain all the scriptures.)  

Unlike our two friends in Luke’s story, we have had a promise that Jesus is going to come back. But when it’s been nearly two thousand years, we’re mostly not looking for him to show up, physically and dramatically, today.

 

And I wouldn’t be surprised at myself, or at us jointly, if you and I didn’t really recognize Jesus as Jesus if he did turn up among us right now. 

So this story about Jesus turning up unexpectedly might be meant to help prompt us to look. To put us on notice that Jesus really and vividly turns up in random places, and we should be watching for him. Especially in places we would not expect to see Jesus.

On the road home from work or worship, maybe.

And I think, yes, you and I should, anywhere, every day, be looking for Jesus to turn up. He did tell us – via several scriptural writers – that he is coming back, eventually.

But I think there’s more to this story.

Maybe you noticed, as you listened this morning, that Luke mentions that the two travelers’ “eyes were kept from recognizing” Jesus.

That passive voice construction is often a gospel writer’s way of saying “It was God who did that thing”. So maybe…

Maybe there’s something important – at least sometimes – about being with Jesus, about having Jesus with us – without our noticing, recognizing, or knowing that Jesus is there. 

Maybe because of the way things suddenly, freshly fall into place for the two travelers when – with hindsight and insight – they suddenly know that this extraordinary stranger was – all along – their own friend and teacher risen from the dead.
There’s a special and extraordinary power in that kind of reflective recognition, that “oh, that explains it” moment, that can make those insights more poignant, more memorable, more meaningful to our hearts.

And if that’s what this story is about, then maybe the way you and I should respond is not so much to look for Jesus everywhere, anytime, but instead to keep checking our rearview mirrors.  To make it a habit to ask ourselves “where was Jesus present today, even if I wasn’t looking at the time? Where did God surprise us?”

There are a number of different time-honored spiritual and prayer practices designed to give some structure to that hindsight; to help us make a pattern of looking back at what just happened, and finding where Jesus was with us. The Ignatian daily “examen” is one of them, but there are other ways to get into that habit of retrospective recognizing. I learned one of the simplest from the kids when I was helping lead a Vacation Bible School many years ago. Each day we’d ask about “God-sightings”. Where did you see God yesterday? This morning?

I’m pretty sure that none of the kids who told us about the presence of God in their day had been looking for Jesus when they scraped their knee on the playground, were struggling to share their floating toys at the community pool, or in most of the other stories I heard. But I noticed a real sense of recognition, and comfort or joy, in many cases when a child mentioned “sighting God” when a bandaid and kiss were applied to that skinned knee, or they’d made a new friend at the pool.

So I still ask myself, many days, “well, Emily, where were your God-sightings yesterday?” And over and over again I find that heart-warming (sometimes heart-burning) recognition “oh, there was Jesus in the grocery store. Oh, there, at that lunch table, I was in the presence of God.”

Sometimes I feel quite foolish about not spotting those things in the moment. I can’t imagine why I wasn’t looking for, expecting Jesus, when I visited with our preschool students to write the prayers we are praying today – but when I look back, Jesus was so very vividly there!

I have a lot of empathy with the two travelers whose story we heard today if they were kicking themselves for not noticing how very Jesus-y that stranger was on the road. And a lot of empathy for the joy I think they felt in their belated recognition, anyway.

I know – I’ve read this story many times – I know that looking for Jesus every day is important.
I know from experience that looking back to discover where Jesus has been with me is a gift.

But this week, I couldn’t resist speculating about one other thing. 

I wonder if sometimes the reason we might be “kept from recognizing” Jesus is that there are times when it’s simpler, easier, or just better to listen and learn about God’s work, to puzzle out the miracles and meaning of our days, without the overwhelming awe and wonder of knowing we’re face to face with God in that moment.  I know some of our teachers in the preschool work lovingly every day to help our kids learn about God’s love for them – especially in those moments when no one feels like Jesus is watching. 

Or – maybe – just every so often – there are times when Jesus just wants to be with us, to spend time with you or me, without any fanfare.  

I wonder about that, every once in a while, when I stand on the sidewalk outside the open chapel window and listen and pray along while our Preschool friends pray and sing and tell stories, and I soak up the joy and holiness without letting anyone see me. 

I’ve been doing a lot of noticing God around Trinity Preschool this week because we’ve been preparing to celebrate Preschool Sunday today – and because, well, one of the reasons I like to celebrate Preschool Sunday is because it’s easy – if sometimes only in hindsight! – to find the love and joy of God in our preschool.

But I suspect Jesus shows up with us – without you and me quite recognizing the moment – often. At work or on the way home; at school or on the lacrosse field, at the grocery or the gym.. In any place in our lives.

And that – recognized and unrecognized – God delights in spending that time with us. And that, just as he did on that road outside Jerusalem, looked for or not, Jesus comes to us, to make sure we know that we’ve been blessed, and loved, and fed.

And to be honest, that’s what I was looking for when I came to church today.

And so, I hope, are you.

Disbelief

John 20:19-31

Think about something you don’t believe.

That the Moon is made of cheese, maybe.

Some things seem so self-evidently untrue – at least by the time we’ve steered imagination into adulthood – that you almost can’t imagine anyone believing them. These ideas become an easy cultural reference for things no one believes.

Or maybe you don’t believe that, say: 

any gecko lizards actually speak English and have preferred auto insurance companies. 

that “reality TV” is a completely unscripted documentary.

That a handful of kids and some flying bikes can and will get an extra-terrestrial being home again (or, if your formative movie years were different from mine, maybe that ruby slippers will get you home, or that broomsticks fly and school is magic).

Some things we don’t actually believe, but enjoy by suspending our disbelief. And maybe some of these are things that you would love to believe, even though you’re sure they aren’t real. (I’m not entirely immune to the temptations of time travel myself).

Then there are the other unbeliefs:

Some bitter disbeliefs – like when you don’t believe that a news outlet, government office, or friend is telling you the truth. 

Some very practical disbeliefs – like not believing it’s safe to eat a picnic in the middle of Route 73. 

Some disbeliefs that keep us from achieving dreams – ways that we don’t believe in our own capacity to grow or learn or do important things, or don’t believe you can trust others to help make your dreams happen.

And some disbeliefs that keep us out of trouble – like not believing that I can break every law and get away with it, or that I can wave my hand and cure cancer or bring the dead back to life.

So if someone told you that a beloved friend, maybe the most important person in your life, had gotten up out of their grave and come back for a visit, I think it’s more sensible to ask which kind of disbelief you’re feeling, rather than whether you believe it. At least right at first.

Maybe it’s a very practical disbelief – protecting you from additional grief, or the possibility of losing your sense of reality. Maybe it’s the confident, self-evident disbelief of the cheesy moon – where you don’t believe the person telling you this could even imagine it’s true. It’s self-evidently a joke.

Maybe it’s that kind of yearning disbelief – the thing you know isn’t true but oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if it could be, even just for a moment.

Everyone who appears in our gospel story this morning has had to experience this. (Well, everyone but Jesus.)

Every one of the disciples in this story, just like you and me, first hears that Jesus is alive, again, from someone else. Thomas hears from the excited or stunned reports of the whole group who greeted him with “hey, while you were gone, we have seen the Lord.”  And that whole group had heard the same unbelievable thing from Mary Magdalene, earlier that same day. And I suspect few, if any, of them believed this resurrection was real, physical, and undoubtable, even if they believed Mary had seen something improbable., and probably didn’t believe it when they heard it.

Because it’s impossible.

Talking geckos, flying bikes, cheesy moons have nothing on this story of a person you have seen and known to be dead coming back to life.

Of that experience revealing something divine. Something nobody seems to be able to put into specific words – until Thomas says it – but which John keeps trying to show us anyway.

John doesn’t tell us anything about how the general group of disciples responded when they first heard the impossible news from Mary, John focuses in, instead, to tell us just how Thomas responded.

That Thomas, hearing good and glorious news that’s both impossible and improbable, demands to experience it for himself.  To know and believe by the direct experience of his senses.

He could be the precursor of the scientific thinker who needs replicable experiments before accepting conclusions.

But I suspect that Thomas’s clearly stated demand for experience to believe is not an expression of skepticism or resistance to belief. I suspect it’s the demand of someone who deeply, urgently wants to believe. 

To have not only an intellectual acceptance that his friends are telling him the truth as best they can describe it, but to believe with his whole heart, soul, and body, to live this impossible possibility with the same unconscious certainty that you and I have in gravity – the certainty that your foot will come down on the earth again when you pick it up, and that you won’t be left hanging in midair. 

I’ve felt something like that before – that deep aching yearning to experience the powerful connection, the confidence in God’s promises, the absolute bedrock reality of Jesus’ love that I’ve seen in someone else’s life or story. Maybe you have, too.

And so, when Thomas has this experience – when Jesus brings him exactly the tactile certainty that takes belief out of the realm of mind and thought and into the very pores of your body – I hear elation and relief and homecoming, I hear profound fulfillment, in his response naming Jesus as God. My God.

And I believe that that’s what Jesus and John both want for us – for you and me, each time we encounter this story.

Some of us come to this story secure in our own belief. Hear it with a heart-rooted certainty of Jesus’ reality, divinity, and resurrection. For that some of us, this story is a reminder of just how extraordinary that certainty is, and a chance to renew the elation of that belief.

I suspect, though, that many of us come to this story, this week, with some kind of disbelief.
Maybe the cheesy moon kind of disbelief – a sense that resurrection is so unreasonable it doesn’t even matter what Thomas, or the other disciples, doubted.

Maybe a protective disbelief, the kind that keeps you from being disappointed that something this miraculous doesn’t happen to you, or that keeps you from having to consider all kinds of impossible things as possible, once you accept this one.

Maybe the suspended disbelief that lets you fully enter a story, but not expect it to have a real impact on your own life.

All of those are ways to let the story go on, a chance to look for the gifts of God, a relationship with Jesus, in other ways.

But I think John tells us this story, I think Jesus intentionally returns to Thomas, because they are inviting us to share that yearning for belief. Inviting us to set free our own – often suppressed – longing for the impossible reality of resurrection, the personal assurance of God’s power for me. I suspect that Jesus would be delighted to see you and me demand to experience resurrection and to know for real, to believe in ways that change the center of gravity in our lives. 

Because to do that is, already, to believe.

To act as if the impossible is real, and we can share it, too, is believing already.

To long for and even demand that deep tangible certainty of what we’ve heard is happening, and want to be true, is an act of faith, a leap of trust.

To reach our own physical hands toward the impossible physical reality of wounded, divine, resurrected Jesus is, in itself, an act of belief. Insistent, faithful belief in what we have not yet seen. 

With that hope, that reach for what we so wish to find true, Jesus can look at you and me, saying, “blessed are we who have not seen and yet, now, yearningly, insistently, believe.”

Happy Ending

Matthew 28:1-10

If Disney were making a movie about Jesus, I expect they’d use Matthew’s version of the story for the ending. 

Mark gives us the empty tomb as a cliffhanger. Luke shows it as a high point in the final episodes setting up a spinoff series. John writes it as a set of open-ended scenes that pave the way for more complex theological narratives. 

But Matthew? Matthew gives us a classic happy ending.

It’s got drama: an earthquake breaking the stillness of the dawn; a brilliantly super-human messenger, the startling collapse of the tomb guards – we have all the special effects to make the scene exciting. 

The angel moves the action along quickly, offering the women reassurance, an invitation to see for themselves, and the command to carry the happy news away, almost all at once. Seizing the dismay and uncertainty you’d naturally feel, seeing a dear friend or family member’s grave wide open, and pushing it to action, resolution.  

(“It’s okay. See? Let’s go!” I can hear the background music swelling…)   

And so the women leave the tomb, carrying us with them in the heightened emotions of narrative climax, and here 

– at last, so quickly –

 is Jesus.

Risen Jesus.

Not dead, after all. Living Jesus.

The tragedy of Good Friday, of death and abandonment, is resolved, the tension of the empty tomb is released, because here is Jesus,

himself, alive, returned.  

[All better?]

Whose first word is “Rejoice!”

For these women, for Jesus, “chairete” would have been as commonplace and unremarkable a greeting as “hello”, or “good morning” is for us – but, literally, it’s “rejoice!”

This is a happy ending.

A joyful ending, in a world – and a faith – where lots of endings aren’t  happy, and some stories have no end in sight.

This reunion of Jesus and the women – which I cannot help seeing in bright, warm, happy-looking light – offers more reassurance, and more promise. They will see this renewed Jesus again, when they gather their friends in Galilee, able to be confident once more that all God’s promises will be fulfilled. That all will be well.

Where we stop reading this morning is not quite the end of Matthew’s story. He pauses to stamp out a rumor that resurrection is just a trick, and finishes with this morning’s last promises fulfilled. 

The disciples do gather in Galilee, as invited, 

and do see Jesus, as promised, and the story is complete with a look toward the future, with a commandment to share the story and bring others into the fulfilled promise. 

All of it a happy ending. A sense of completeness.
An assurance that that all will be well, that ever after is real, and meaningful, and we can rejoice in it.

I love a happy ending.

I’m a re-reader, especially of stories that have a happy ending, a resolution that makes the future look bright, and whole, and joyful.

I go back to those stories because I need that touchstone of reassurance – from fiction, movies, and true stories – that things can work out even when everything has gone wrong. 

It helps me keep going, stay hopeful, keep the faith. 

Dipping into fictional or true remembrances of joyful outcomes helps me navigate through the real world in the places where nothing gets finished, the times when you have to accept that some things stay broken, as well as in the places where the happy ending is still possible.

And that’s what Matthew offers us.

Matthew invites us today to re-live that experience of dramatic resolution, that reassurance of promise fulfilled, to rejoice in the happy ending for the grieving women, the lost disciples, for God and you and me.

It’s not always enough.

Sometimes what we need from Easter, from the impossible defeat of death itself, is not reassurance, but provocation. Open-ended possibility or new questions.

Sometimes we need God’s power not to tie everything up neatly, but instead to yank us out of our comfort, upend our assumptions, and change everything.

All of that is there, every Easter Sunday.

Every time you or I turn our attention to the fundamental impossibility of what still must be true – that Jesus, truly dead, vanished from the tomb in which he was sealed, 

and lives again, in power beyond our comprehension – 

every revolutionary possibility we need to jolt us alive is there. 

And sometimes even the joy and reassurance of a happy ending – the confidence and hope of all things made well – can be the jolt or disturbance we need when we’ve gotten adapted to hopelessness and everyday tragedy, when we’ve lowered our expectations to rock bottom, or stopped spending the energy to even imagine a better world.

Easter – resurrection – does not let us get stuck in the things we’ve always known.

But sometimes what we do need from Easter is the simplest truth of a happy ending.
A moment when we can’t help but smile, even when life doesn’t seem to offer anything to smile about. 
A deep breath of satisfaction – never mind that every single thing at work and home is incomplete. 

Sometimes we need that reassuring sense that all can become well,
that the end of the traumatic, messy story you or I may be living right now can also bring a whole-hearted opportunity to rejoice. 

[Because what God wants - for the world, and for you and me particularly - is that our joy may be complete.]

So we tell this story.

We read, remember, retell this dramatic, strange, bright and powerful happy ending  Matthew offers us this morning.

When no end, happy or otherwise, seems in sight, we can let this be our touchstone, a solid reassurance kept in our pockets for our fingers to brush, or a token that lets us measure what in the world we can hold true:

That God’s promises are fulfilled.

All can be well. All may already be well.

You can return to this happy ending as often as you might need it to build up your strength for another day of unhappy middle-of-the-story work or waiting. 

I can return as often as I might need to exercise the muscles of hope and trust in my heart and soul.
We can repeat this story – to ourselves, to others, as we do today – to renew the promise and invitation of joy in a world that almost always needs more joy.

We can re-read, re-watch, re-live this happy ending – and I believe we should – not only when we need and long for it, but when things are ordinary, average, and boring, too. 

Because the joy that Jesus invites us to – the joy and assurance that grow our hearts, expand our spirits – opens up space in the world for more and more joy. 

More of the longing for a happy resolution that moves us into action instead of passivity. 

More of the confidence that risks transformation,

more of the hope that opens our hearts, and invites others into joy.

So rejoice with me today. 

Hear Jesus’ joyful greeting, and celebrate, even if joy isn’t quite the story you’re living today.

Receive reassurance, confidence and hope today, even if you didn’t ask for it.

Accept balm for your grief, even if you are not grieving.

Enjoy a visit to happy ever after, even while you’re keeping your eyes and actions on resolving the injustices here and now.

Because today before our story ends, before your storyline resolves, before you’re ready:

living, renewed, resurrected, impossible Jesus comes to meet us, looks at you and me in our unresolved, ordinary lives, in whatever fear and hope we carry,

and says to us, “Rejoice!”

And today, wherever we are in our stories, you and I get to respond, “Alleluia!”