When We Can't Do

Mark 16:1-8

What do you do when it doesn’t matter what you do?

 

When nothing you can do will change what has happened, what is happening?

When the forces of life and death, inertia and change, world events or entirely personal experiences are obviously beyond your control?

 

Mary and Mary and Salome do something anyway.

They buy spices – spices to mask the unpleasant scents of death. It’s almost certainly too late to prevent a stink, by the morning of the third day, but they buy spices anyway.

They get up early, probably when no one else is around, and go to the tomb of their friend, knowing – acknowledging to each other – that they can’t get into the tomb with their spices, anyway.
They know they can’t budge the heavy stone that seals the entrance to Jesus’ tomb. 

And they go – with their spices – anyway.

 

They know it’s futile.
They know nothing they do is going to change the fact that Jesus is dead, murdered by the manipulation of the governing authorities. They know – probably – that their spices are hardly going to make a difference to the stink or to the process of decay, even if they could get into the sealed tomb.

I can’t tell – Mark doesn’t say – if they walked to the tomb fully aware of the weight of impossibility, or if they felt irrationally hopeful. Don’t know if they just wanted to say they tried, or if they are too numb to even think that far.

 

But there they are. 

Doing what they do, whether it will matter or not.

 

And all of a sudden, the little impossible things – the smell, the heavy rock; the things they, we, can’t do anything to change – disappear into the biggest impossible thing of all. 

Into what God has done.

 

The stone is unsealed.

The tomb is empty.

The story isn’t over.

Impossibly – impossibly – Jesus has been raised from the dead.

Is alive.

 

And left them – and their friends – and Peter – a message. 

You will see him in Galilee – just as he told you.

It would make perfect sense if their hearts stopped for just a moment. Mine would.

I imagine the precious spices dropping from hands suddenly numb with shock, before the moment unfreezes, and they run.

 

Twice in one short morning Mary, and Mary, and Salome face a situation in which nothing they can do will change what has happened, what is happening.
The first time, they do something anyway.

The second time, they run away.

 

Leaving you and me – as we read, as we watch their story unfold – with nothing we can do to change it.

And once again, God acts.

 

Mark drops his pen (or his quill?) with everything unfinished. Mary and Mary and Salome running, gasping in panicked awe, their good news, their message to the disciples (to us) silenced with shock. 

The tomb empty and Jesus gone.  

Resurrection hanging on a cliff – the miracle accomplished, but not recognized, accepted, or rejoiced in.

 

It drives me crazy, that abrupt and unfinished narrative.
And I love it.

 

Because the only way we get from there to here – from the silenced message of the empty tomb to a church full of flowers and alleluias, to people who know death does not win, is God.

God bridging the gaps.
God changing everything when it is impossible for anything you or I could do to change anything.

 

I’m not sure, but I think maybe that’s why Mark stops right here.

Right here when awe and shock leave the story incomplete, 

the story of what humans do stops, 

and you and I – with Mary and Mary and Salome, and the other disciples and Peter – we hang on the edge of what God does. 

The story – this story, your story and mine – are entirely in the hands of God.

 

And in the hands of God, everything changes.

Death – the one eternal certainty (besides taxes) – death is canceled.                 

Life expands – life becomes full of the impossible, breaks realistic and practical into scattered fragments, and sweeps us into God’s reality, where every moment is full of the glory of eternity. 

Where joy will always have the last word, even when we have no words to claim that joy.

 

 

I don’t know about you, but I need this now.

These days, this world is so jammed with things I can’t do anything to change.

Full of forces I can’t stop or slow, immovable stones I can’t get leverage on. 

Wars and atrocities, devastating weather and tragic accidents – both on a global and a personal scale. Constant assaults on human dignity, and on our ability to trust one another, on TV and social media, in legislatures and courts, at a scale I can’t figure out how to mitigate – on my own or with others. 

Every day, like Mary and Mary and Salome, I – maybe you? – have to figure out what I do when faced with those things where nothing I can do will matter.

 

Sometimes, we can act.
We can buy spices to make the mess a little more livable. We can care for someone else, in the face of the things we cannot change.

We can show up, even where there’s every reason to expect that we can’t get past the barricade – of a stone on a tomb, of official indifference, of money, of social inertia.

This probably matters more than it seems to.

 

But what I need, what we need, I believe, is to enter this story, and to come face-to-face with the reality of miracles, the startling, gut-punching awe of God doing the impossible.
I need (we need) to stand in front of what God has done, is doing, can do, bring that once-and-far-away wonder right into the middle of all of our own impossibilities. 

 

I can’t promise you that when you walk into your next impossible, you’ll find all the barriers knocked down, endings obliterated, and a world of possibility in front of you.

But I can’t promise that you won’t, either.

 

I can only leave you where Mark leaves us, suspended in the moment where God must act. Leaves us in the hands of God.

The only place where death is canceled.

Where every moment – every unfixable moment, every ordinary moment – is edged with the glory of eternity. And where joy will always have the last word, whether we ourselves are indifferent, or awe-stunned and silent, or whether we cannot keep ourselves from singing, whispering, shouting: Alleluia!

 

Unreasonable

Genesis 7:11-18, 8:6-18, 9:8-13; Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21; Ezekiel 36:24-28; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Mark 16:1-8

This is a night for drama.

A night for letting yourself get swept into the dark and the light, the symbols and the stories.

A night to let go of making sense, and to plunge into the deep end of mystery and miracles; of awe, and wonder, and promises.

A night to enjoy the reality of things that look unreasonable in the light of day.

 

Because there’s nothing reasonable, nothing that stands up to the practical light of day, about earth-drowning floods, dried with a rainbow.
Or dry land suddenly disrupting the whole ecosystem of a sea to rescue a rag-tag tribe of refugees. 

Or stone hearts; or vast and lonely valleys of scattered bones reassembling at a word. 

 

But tonight, we live in those stories. We inhabit the world of absurd miracles and preposterous promises. We immerse ourselves tonight, in the darkness, and in the light, in the power of story to tell truths that are utterly impractical – and absolutely essential.

 

Like resurrection.

Of all the unreasonable things – new life here, physically, after death?

Any of us might want our loved ones back, but I suspect few of us are prepared for them to be abruptly missing from the grave and demanding we rush to Galilee to meet them.

Upending the process of grief, demanding that we take the unimaginable as fact, the impossible as just what we do next.

 

Mark doesn’t try to smooth the rough edges of resurrection. He just sits in the bizarreness, the impossible, with us as he tells the story of Jesus, raised from the dead.

 

Because the truth tonight (always) is that God is unreasonable.

And that that is, in fact, the good news.
The way it should be.

Because hope and joy and wonder and possibility should not be confined to the reasonable. The deepest loves and deepest needs of our hearts should not be practical, sensible, restrained.

 

The world we mostly live in, day by day, tends to demand skepticism, pragmatism, and caution. It’s much easier to get through our days when we limit the possibilities for risk and disappointment, and many of us have learned to be expert at managing expectations, living in the reasonable.

 

But sensible, practical expectations make no room for heaven, make no room in our hearts and souls for impossible glory, for eternity to take up residence inside us.

And yet, that’s what’s happening tonight.

That’s what the stories and the candles and the lights and the bells insist on.

That’s what baptism is. 

Heaven, eternity, taking up residence in us.

Us taking up residence in resurrection.

Living in the holy unreasonable, the sacred impractical heart of God.

 

So tonight, dive deep in wonder, miracle, mystery and promise. 

 

Embrace the you that’s been rescued tonight from flood and from enemies and oppression, that’s been transformed from the inside out with a non-surgical heart transplant, that’s been reassembled from scattered bones and been made whole.

The you that stands with Mary and Mary and Salome on the threshold of a tomb where death has been obliterated, and life impossible demands you leap into it.

The you that wades through the waters of baptism to find in your ordinary self the extraordinary fullness of Christ’s own eternal life and love.

 

Because only when we let the unreasonable be real for us – embrace and trust the divine wonder that isn’t provable, or practical – can that wonder transform what is practical and provable, and everyday. 

Only when we’re immersed in resurrection do we catch the glimpses of eternity on the edges of our own errands, the flickers of glory in a passing conversation, the deep, strong glow of divinity in an act of ordinary friendship. 

 

This is a night for embracing the unreasonable with all our heart and soul.

Because this is the night that God, wild and fiery and tempestuous and free and utterly amazing, fiercely and unreasonably embraces us and all the wonder that we can hold.

Not Ready

John 18:1-19:37

I’m not ready for this.

 

To be honest, I’m never ready for this.

I know the story, yes. I know how it unfolds, how it ends.

I’m still never ready.

Not ready for the impact of telling this story together,

for what it is like to enter this story, 

take this front row seat to catastrophe, tragedy, death.

 

I’m never ready – even when I think I’m prepared – I’m not ready to find myself at the foot of the cross.

 

But neither is anyone in the story ready. 

No one is prepared for this.
Not Peter, and not Pilate.

Not Annas and Caiaphas and their cabal of priests and leaders – who have been actively laying plans to trap Jesus and kill him.

They are busy, busy throughout the story, working their plan, busy accomplishing exactly what they set out to get – but they are also not quite ready for how Jesus and Pilate react to their planning.

 

Nor the other disciples, nor the faithful Marys and John who make it to the foot of the cross and stand there – watching, waiting, being there when being there is all that’s left to do. 

We don’t know – John never tells us – whether they were frantic, or accepting, or bewildered, or angry, or even full of hope. We don’t know if they knew, or thought they knew, what was happening.
And even if they did, well, no matter how ready, how prepared you are for exactly this – you still can’t be fully ready to watch someone you love die.

 

Nobody in this story is ready for this.

Except Jesus.

 

Right away, right where we started reading the story tonight, John the narrator points out to us that Jesus knows exactly what is going to happen.

And we watch as, scene by scene, moment by moment, Jesus keeps on making it happen. 

Encouraging his own arrest, pointing out to Pilate that he’s not resisting, that he’s of a higher authority than Pilate. Raising his head from the cross to summon the fulfillment of scripture, proclaiming completion and – as John precisely notes – giving his own life, not having it taken from him.

 

As John tells this story, Jesus is ready, Jesus in control, every step of the way.

 

Which is comforting – a bit – and terrifying at the same time, when I pause and think about it. 

Who would, how could anyone, human or divine or both, choose this?

But that’s exactly what we watch Jesus, watch God do.

 

And that, perhaps, explains why I’m not ready – never ready.

Because we can’t – we truly can’t – ever be fully ready for what God is about to do, for what God is doing.

Whatever God is doing, there is always so much more of it than we can imagine, so much more of it than we can prepare for, more even than we will even see or experience for ourselves.

 

There’s so much more of this story,

more of salvation,

more of the cross itself,

more of the philosophical and political debates among the priests and Pilate, or later scholars,

more of the heart-wrenching personal griefs and losses and hopes of Mary and Mary and John and Peter and unnamed others at the foot of the cross and the margins of the story,

more of Jesus himself,

than my brain and heart can hold.

 

So once again, always, I’m raw and unprepared for how it happens,

surprised to find myself here,

in the wash of bewilderment, uncertain of the ground under my feet, or how I’m going to hold this story for you, for us, here, remembering,

or for myself.

 

And maybe

maybe that’s how and where I’m supposed to be.

Maybe this place, these feelings, the uncertainties – 

for some of us the raw wounds of tragedy and grief, for some of us the slight awkwardness of being unmoved by a story supposed to wrench our hearts, for some of us the whole spectrum of different possible responses to a moment when God – God – is dead…. on purpose?...

— maybe the unexpectedness is the holiest possible place to be. 

 

Maybe uncertain is the holiest possible way to be, when we arrive at the foot of the cross, swept here by the certainty of Jesus.

 

At the foot of this cross, the focal point of Good Friday;

or at some other cross, some other unbearable tragedy or catastrophe we could never be ready for  

– or some other sacrifice we never asked for – 

maybe uncertain, unready, unsettled is the holiest way to be.

 

Unmoored from the certainties we usually hold, tumbled loose of our own ability to predict and prepare, we are free to be swept up in the story God is telling, the tide that God is turning.

Adrift, unbound, and free, in the hands and heart of God. 

Which is, perhaps, the holiest place, the only way, to be.

 

 

On Our Hearts

Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:20-33

If you hear me – or another preacher, or some excerpt from the Bible – talking about a “covenant with God”, how many of you picture a visual image for that “covenant”?

If you do, is it a scroll, or some official-looking piece of paper?

(while God-covenants are definitely not the same as legal contracts, there are some ideas in common that might lead us to that kind of image)

 

Is it stone tablets?

This could be a common image – we do talk, in the church and the culture around us – about the “ten commandments” as a covenant from God. And those of us who grew up with Indiana Jones know that the “Ark of the Covenant” is the very fancy dangerous mysterious box in which the tablets of those commandments were kept. (Others might have learned that through non-Hollywood sources)

 

Do any of you, hearing or thinking about “covenants”, usually get a mental image of a beating human heart? 

Those four chambers of muscle, fleshy red, continuously pumping blood and life?

 

That’s not the image that usually floats in or out of my head when I hear, or talk, about God’s covenant with us.

But it might be the image in God’s mind when God thinks about covenant with us.

 

We heard this morning from the prophet Jeremiah that the days are surely coming when God will write God’s law, God’s covenant on the hearts of God’s people. 

 

Put your hand over your heart for a minute and think about this with me.

Right there, right in the physical center of life in our bodies, God’s law, God’s will, God’s way of living… almost the mind of God, the heart of God in your heart, in mine.

 

The idea of it feels a little overpowering. It might be a little too much closeness of God.

But – I don’t know about you, but I also find it beautifully attractive. 

I do kind of love the idea that, with God’s law, God’s love embedded in my heart, I wouldn’t have to struggle to figure out what’s the best thing to do, the God thing to do.
Being “good”, being holy, making peace, healing, forgiving, doing the right thing, the loving thing, would come naturally, would feel normal, even effortless.

It would be so nice, in this complicated world, not to have to wonder about the right thing, but just to do it directly from the heart. 

 

Is that attractive to anyone else here, or is it just me?

 

And then, what if our whole community lived that way? What if you and I could trust that the people we encounter every day – at the office (or school) or the store or the tax accountant’s and the car repair – had God’s law, God’s love, written in their hearts, too?
What if our whole community worked like the heart of God: generous, forgiving, joyful, thinking first of others; always, heartbeat by heartbeat,  attuned to the healing and wholeness of the world?

 

Honestly, that feels so radical I’m not sure I can imagine it.

But I think I like it.

 

And then,

well, then I get a little annoyed that we’re still waiting for this promise God offered to God’s people roughly twenty-six centuries ago.  The days are surely coming, says the Lord. But when?

 

I had a little conversation with some of you this week about whether God’s promises like this are reliable, or not.

The Bible is full of God’s promises of an eternal, secure homeland to God’s people…. and the news these days is full of how messily that idea is working out several thousand years later.

(For that matter, the Bible suggests it was also pretty messy for a lot of those ancient centuries, too.)

 

Then God promised that David’s line would rule Israel forever, secure in prosperity and God’s love. And the words of the prophet Jeremiah that we heard this morning are addressed to God’s people specifically after David’s line has been toppled and exiled, and the Temple they built in Jerusalem – the symbol of the permanence of God’s presence with the people – has been destroyed. 

Now God promises an exiled people, seems to promise us, that the days are surely coming when all God’s people will love God, and live God’s dream for the world from the center of our hearts.
Can we count on that, now or ever?

 

Welllll….

I think we can count on God’s intent – the core of every covenant God offers (stone tablet covenants or heart covenants or any other), the heart of all God’s promises.

The part where, over and over, we hear God say to us, “I will be your God, and you will be my people”

I believe you and I can count on a truth that, in every generation and every circumstance, God is claiming us, adopting us, making it personal that we belong – that we belong to God, that we belong to love, and home, and eternal glory.

 

I believe we can also count on the connecting thread of all God’s promises – that God is always bending the universe toward peace, and glory, and wholeness, and our being truly and lastingly at home in God’s home, in God’s heart.

 

The details of how that works are messy, incomplete, and – frankly – often disappointing.

But in those messy details, too, we can often find evidence of the keeping of God’s promises. 

 

Remember a few minutes ago when I asked you to put your hand on your heart and imagine what it would be like to have God’s law, God’s love embedded in your heart?

If, while we thought about that this morning, you had a bit of a yearning for that experience – if you wanted, hoped, just a bit, that that could be real, that God’s love would live deeply in your heart, naturally guide you in this complicated world…. Well, that yearning, that hoping, are, I think, the signs of God’s law, God’s love, being written into your heart.

Not fully bloomed for many of us, maybe, but a seed of that promise planted, taking root.

If you’ve ever had a longing to meet Jesus for yourself, to get close to the healing miracles, the inspiration, the sense of presence,

hoped for that in the Eucharist, in the bread of communion;

if you’ve gone looking for it in the Bible, or in a teacher or a friend,

like those “Greeks” in our gospel story today, coming to Philip and saying “we wish to see Jesus”,

maybe that’s what it’s like to feel God writing covenant on your heart.

Inscribing inside you the shape of the love that makes us close to God, makes us more like God. 

 

I don’t know exactly what God has in mind, for this writing in our hearts. I don’t know the certain answer to how God’s promises will be true. Some things remain above my pay grade.

But written deep in my heart there is a certainty that God is still writing love into us – “us” here together this morning, “us” the whole people of God in the world.

 

So maybe, in these last two weeks of Lent, as we get closer to the miracles of Easter, the invitation to impossible and invincible new life, maybe it’s worth paying attention to what God has written in our hearts already.

Maybe not the whole law, the whole of God’s love, the certainty that everything my heart suggests I do is the holy, life-giving, world-healing work of God, is inscribed within me, or you. 

But the moment of longing for that confident closeness to God might be the first letters of that love being written in us. 

The times when you notice the impulse of your heart to forgiveness, to generosity, to compassion and joy for the complicated people around you – that might be a phrase, a few key words of God written into you.

 

Watch for those with me, will you?

This week, this month, this whole life we share – watch for those longings, those moments, that love that does flow naturally from your heart, into which God’s heart is, even now, being written.