Luke 4:1-13 "Hover"

         It all began shortly after Jesus wended his way down to the Jordan River and was baptized.  What with the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and fluttering for a moment or two over his head and the holy booming voice from heaven declaring him to be the Son with whom Yahweh/God was well-pleased, surely Jesus felt equipped to go forth and do ministry.  

         However - “Soon, but not yet,” God informed him.  And instead the Holy Spirit shooed Jesus off into the wilderness.  There he remained for 40 days and 40 nights – like Noah in his ark – all that time, we are told, with no food to eat and nothing to drink, no books to read, no cell phone to facetime with, no ipad for wiling away the time watching youtube videos of cute kittens and guilty dogs and for checking his newsfeed on facebook.  Alas, no internet at all to aimlessly surf.  A six-week time out.

         It was just Jesus out there - alone with his hopes and dreams and fears - and prayers.  With all the cultural trappings and distractions removed, what was left foremost in his mind were his thoughts about what most likely would tempt him to compromise his ministry.  Three things really.  

First, there was the physical aspect of walking from town to town and village to village, not knowing if he would have a bed at night or where his next meal would come from.  He heard his stomach growling, even now in the wilderness.  Playingon that hunger, the first ugly thought emerged: “So you think you are God’s son, someone special. Then command this stone to turn into a loaf of bread.”

            Jesus thought for a while and then answered himself by quoting from the book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament part of the Bible: “It takes more than bread to really live.”  No bread now, he intuitively sensed.  That day would come.  

And, sure enough, it did too because in the not-too-distant future, late one afternoon he would find himself gazing at a hungry crowd.  Many of them would be like him here in the wilderness, not knowing where their next meal was coming from.  

At the moment when Jesus would feel enormous compassion but be at a complete loss as to how to help, a nameless boy would step up to share his supper, and Jesus would bless the bread and the fish. That meager but generous offering would feed five thousand people.  “Yes,” Jesus realized, ““It takes more than bread to really live.  It takes compassion.  It takes generosity.”

         Next he imagined being led up a high mountain to see all the kingdoms of the earth on display. And he heard a cajoling voice say, “They could all be yours to control at your pleasure. Imagine that!  All yours if you will just worship the power, the money, the greed.  All yours if you will only embrace the cultural values of this world – the walls, the weapons, the tax loopholes, the rich get rich and the poor get poorer.”

         However, once again, Jesus did not listen long to that niggling but persuasive voice.  He  abstained, again backing his refusal with Hebrew scripture: “Worship the Lord your God and only the Lord your God. Serve God with absolute single-heartedness.”  And if you serve God, he told himself confidently, then you serve love   - and that is good.

And finally, Jesus encountered a third test.  He found himself imagining that he was on the very highest pinnacle of the Jerusalem Temple, and that ugly voice within him spoke, “If you are God’s Son, jump. It’s written, isn’t it, right there in the Psalms, that ‘he has placed you in the care of angels to protect you; they will catch you; you won’t so much as stub your toe on a stone’?”

“Yes,” said Jesus to himself, but “it is also written, ‘Don’t you dare tempt the Lord your God.’” From here on out, he concluded, I am in partnership with the Almighty.

And on that triumphant note, Jesus emerged from the wilderness, his soul-searching complete, and his values clear:  Compassion, reconciliation, radical inclusion, peace-making, non-violence, economic justice, and mercy, a soft spot always in his heart for the poor, the disabled, the powerless.  And on that sacred note, Jesus began his ministry.  

You know, we often read this passage on the first Sunday in the season of Lent.  We use it to contemplate what we might sacrifice over our forty days to feel more akin to Jesus in the wilderness.  In short, we focus almost exclusively on Jesus’ ability to overcome temptation – and hope that we can do the same and survive until Easter without chocolate or Grey’s Anatomy.

However, I think Jesus’ experience in the wilderness – be it desert, forest, or the wilderness of his own mind – was a time of deep and profound soul-searching.  It is in that context, I believe,  that we feel most akin to him.  At least, that is how I understand the passage.  

These verses are significant for us because we see Jesus pausing to figure out some really important stuff about his call to ministry.  The Spirit nudged him away from the 24/7 inevitable chaos of his life into a time of undistracted self-reflection to determine exactly what it was that he stood for, what he would stake his life against.  

In those 40 days, Jesus saw the big picture of God’s sweeping dream for the world and so figured out where he fit into that dream.  In short, Jesus hovered and, in doing so, figured out where he fit into God’s dream.  He intentionally took the time to see the big picture.  He stepped aback and removed himself from all the details and detritus of his life to see something bigger, to see the whole. 

Recently Joe and I went to the musical, “Camelot.”  I had forgotten that, when King Arthur was a young boy, Merlin had once transformed him into a hawk.  As Arthur soared high above the trees, he could see that there were no borders between tribal lands except those claimed by kings and chieftains.  Because he was able to see the big picture, Arthur could dream of his Round Table and one day bring knights from warring factions together in a peaceful initiative.  That is what “hovering” can do.

When I think of “hovering”, I also remember one of the first times I flew from Maine to the West Coast.  Because it was a clear day, I could see the landscape below me morph from populated towns to sparsely populated hills to flat lands to jagged mountain ranges to sprawling cities once again. I was acutely aware of the vast geographic diversity of our nation because I could literally see the big picture below me.

How unfortunate that, in this age of ancient gratification, “hovering” is rapidly becoming a lost art!  We seldom take the time to see the big picture of our lives. Too often,  we get caught up in – and often obsessed by - the intensity of immediate events (thank you cable news), so that even our best laid plans to stay centered leave us feeling fragmented and ungrounded.

It is not only Jesus who depended on hovering to define who he was meant to be.  We all require it.  Each one of us needs time and space to think, to ruminate, to pray for direction and clarity, to consider what is necessary.  It may feel like a luxury, but even Jesus exemplified its necessity. Our work in the world as Christians depends on hovering.  Understanding how our individual actions fit into God’s dream for the world is important stuff.

However, hovering need not be some elaborate visioning quest. As author Emma Mildon shared in an article I read this week, “I have traveled everywhere from Spain to Peru and Egypt to New Zealand meeting tea leaf readers, astrologists, shaman, healers, regressionists, physics, mystics, artists, yogis, and other soul searchers along the way. What did I learn? I learned that while I had emptied my bank account traveling the globe on a search for self-discovery, that actually, all the answers were deep within me — go figure!”

Hovering here in church – understanding where we fit into the big picture of 21^stcentury Christianity – is critical to our survival as a faith community, and it is two pronged. First, it is the intentional practice as a congregation of looking within our church family to discover where our particular energies lie.  Second it is the intentional individual practice of defining what our unique passions are that will build up our church community as we strive to make God’s dream a reality.  

Hovering here in church is recognizing and affirming that what each one of you chooses to do with your time and your gifts will determine whether we thrive – or even survive – as a congregation. What you choose to do with your time and your gifts will affect God’s dream – either enhancing it or diminishing it. 

One day a traveler encountered three stonecutters working in a quarry. Each was busy cutting a block of rock. Interested to find out what they were working on, he asked the first stonecutter what he was doing. 

“I am cutting a stone!” 

Still no wiser, the traveler turned to the second stonecutter and asked him what he was doing. “I am cutting this block of stone to make sure that it’s square, and its dimensions are uniform, so that it will fit exactly in its place in a wall.” 

Still unclear, the traveler turned to the third stonecutter. He seemed to be the happiest of the three and when asked what he was doing replied: “I am building a cathedral.”

Each one of us is – with our gifts and time and energy – is part of something bigger than ourselves. We are stonecutters with a clearly defined purpose.  Each one of us part of a whole, is part of God’s dream.  Each one of us is called to participate in building a cathedral.  Be like the third stonecutter and trust that you are part of that bigger story.  

You see, what you choose to do matters.  What this church chooses to do as we move forward into an unknown future matters. It is so easy for us to look for the quick fix:  more people in the pews, more pledging units, more volunteers to change a rocky financial future. 

Before jumping to those conclusions, however, let’s do some hovering.  Let’s look at the big picture.  Let’s look at God’s dream embodied in the person of Jesus.  Let’s consider the values with which Jesus began his ministry: Compassion, reconciliation, radical inclusion, peace-making, non-violence, economic justice, and mercy, a soft spot always in his heart for the poor, the disabled, the powerless.  

And as we hover, let’s consider where our creative energies and passions fit into those values, into that big picture, that dream.  Let’s ask and answer this question:  

If I didn’t feel like I needed to fix everything, what one thing can I focus on now in this church to help make God’s dream a reality? 

Jesus did his hovering for 40 days in the wilderness, and he clearly defined his values.  When he had done that, he faithfully and, on that sacred note, began his ministry.  May we do likewise.  May we too hover , define our values, and begin our ministry as a church anew.

Luke 4:13-21 "Dream"

 From Wikipedia:  The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model for the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution. The model describes how the universe expanded from a very high-density and high-temperature state, and offers a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB), large scale structure and Hubble's law (i.e. the farther away galaxies are, the faster they are moving away from Earth).

Also from Wikipedia:  Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago, approximately one-third the age of the universe, by accretion from the solar nebula. Volcanic outgassing probably created the primordial atmosphere and then the ocean, but the early atmosphere contained almost no oxygen.  The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates from at least 3.5 billion years ago. There is evidence that life began much earlier.

To put all of this scientific jargon in religious terms (as all religions attempt to do) and specifically in Judeo-Christian terms, the ancient writer of Genesis told a story to explain the phenomenon of creation because he did not possess the same scientific knowledge and jargon that we have today. The story he told is, of course, not literally true.  Instead, it is mythological, which is not to say that it is made up or fake news.  However, it is to say that it holds a truth deeper and more profound than language so long ago could ever convey.

And so, in short, we say that, at the moment of creation, God had a dream.  God had a vision.  And the Spirit of God hovered over the abyss, the void, the nothingness, the waters of the deep, and God said, “Let there be…”  

Let there be light.  Let there be life.  Let there be birds and animals and all sorts of flowers and vegetation. Let there be humanity, women and men, you and me, whose sole purpose it would be to care for creation and to continue the creative work of building God’s realm, working in partnership with God to fulfill the sacred vision.  In addition, let there be Someone, let there be a way, let there be “The Way” to guide you and me and to be a model for all of humanity who choose to follow that path. Let that Someone, that Way show us how to affirm our partnership with God and with each other in this creative project called “life!”

And so it was….And so Jesus returned to Galilee, and the power of the Holy Spirit was upon him - hovering – just as it had once at the very beginning of time hovered over the abyss, the void, and nothingness, the waters of the deep. And Jesus went to Nazareth, his home town, and on the Sabbath, he went to church – and preached his first sermon. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me….’

On blogger I read described the scene this way: “The synagogue is stuffy and crowded . The air is electric, People are whispering to each other about their hometown boy who is making such a name for himself. And he is back in town! As a matter of fact, there he is, sitting near the front. Surely he will be asked to speak…. 

A sudden hush - the service is beginning. The usual prayers, a Psalm, and yes, they are asking Jesus to come forward. Someone was handing him a scroll. He’s unrolling it, looking for the passage he wants. Now he begins. 

…Yahwe/God has chosen me….to bring good news to the poor; Yahweh/God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the lord’s favor.

Slowly, reverently, Jesus rolls up the scroll and hands it back to the attendant. Then, as is the custom, he sits down to teach. Everyone’s eyes are riveted on him. They all hold their breath, thinking, ”Well, he certainly picked a well-known passage. Let’s see how well he remembers what his teachers told him about it; let’s see how good he is at recounting the lessons he’s learned.” 

(Now Jesus might have preached his first sermon on the past, highlighting the wisdom of the acclaimed Isaiah and the prophet’s vision of a world characterized by justice and peace. Then again, Jesus might have elaborated on the world to come – milk and honey, a glorious promise.  “How we long for that,” he might have said. “How we pray all the time for that, but it seems so terribly slow in coming.”)

But what Jesus says next is not what (the congregation) expects at all. He doesn’t repeat the teachings of other rabbis (who might have focused on the past or the future). Instead he says, “Today, the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 

It is the shortest sermon ever.  It is as if he is saying to them: “Isaiah was talking about me. This is my mission.  And, guess what folks, the time is now.  The time is today.”  

There is an intensity in Jesus’ words and in his presence.  The congregation is expecting something, though the men and women do not yet know what that something is.  Of course, with 20/20 hindsight, we can pretty confidently say that, put simply, the something is this:  This mission, my mission, is your mission too. Youare the tools, the supplies, God needs to make God’s dream a reality.  

And guess what?  I speak neither of the past nor of some future time.  I speak of now.  I speak of today. This passage of the ancient prophet Isaiah – the good news, the release, the recovery, the freedom, the proclamation has come true – beginning today.

At first, the congregation was quite impressed by Jesus’ sermon – maybe because it was so short and to the point or because congregations generally give the benefit of the doubt to wet-behind-the-ears young hometown preachers.  At any rate, Jesus got excellent reviews that first time around.  Not like the preacher who solicited sermon feedback from the9- and 10-year-olds in his congregation who attended worship one morning as part of their Sunday School lesson.  Afterwards, each child wrote a letter to the minister reflecting on the experience. Among the comments were these: 

Dear Reverend, I liked your sermon Sunday. Especially when it was finished. --Ralph

Dear Reverend, I like to go to church on Sunday because I don't have any choice. --Margaret

Dear Reverend, Thank you for your sermon Sunday. I will write more when my mother explains to me what you said. --Justin

Dear Reverend, I think more people would come to church if you would move it to Disneyland. --Loreen

As I said, Jesus, on the other hand, received heart-warming and positive comments:  Good sermon, Rabbi.  I could hear every word you said, and I was sitting in the very back of the synagogue. 

Hometown boy made good, it would seem.  However, if we were to continue to read the next few verses in this Gospel of Luke, we would learn that Jesus’ words, when the congregation really thought them, did not sit too well.  Good news?  Release? Recovery? Freedom? Proclamation?  Not here, not in this synagogue!

 The Gospel writer of Luke tells us that the people who heard that first sermon, a couple of days later, tried to put an end to this man who outed their greatest fear, that of actually having to do ministry. They ambushed Jesus, dragged him out of town, took him to the top of the hill on which the town was built, and tried to toss him off the cliffs. 

However, Jesus managed to weasel his way out of such a sudden and ignoble death – and, of course, ministered and healed and modeled compassion and justice and reconciliation, clearly and graphically outlining all that he stood for, the essence of God’s dream, until he stirred up the Pharisees and Roman authorities in Jerusalem some three years later and was tried and executed. 

However, all that he stood for – the compassion, the forgiveness, the justice, the non-violence, the good news to be brought to the poor; the release to be offered to the captives and to all who are imprisoned by their bodies or their spirits or their past, the recovery of sight to the blind and to all who cannot see the brokenness in the world and the fragility of human life, the freedom to be given to all who are oppressed by whatever or whomever they are oppressed by, the proclamation that the time is now…all that Jesus stood for would live – as he did. 

All that Jesus stood would trickle down through the ages, through the centuries to us sitting in our church this morning – and we too would listen to his words and we too would know that today – today - is the time of the lord’s favor.

Episcopal priest Rick Morley wrote a thought-provoking blog on this passage from the Gospel of Luke.  He ponders whether we today are all that different from the synagogue congregation that listened to Jesus’ first sermon.  He wonders:  “Don’t we all go to church expecting something? But, do any of us really take the time to articulate what that something is?

Some, I suppose, expect to hear a good sermon (he writes). Not too long, not too short. Some expect to sing a nice (i.e. familiar) hymn or song. Some expect to be welcomed, and to see people we know. We expect when it’s all over that we’ll have a cup of coffee.

But, how many of us go to church really expecting the Spirit of God to actually show up? Do we expect news so good that it might shatter the despair of the poor? Do we expect release, recovery, and the ending of oppression? And, do we really want all of that to begin with—and would we rather just receive a little comfort, a little encouragement, and nothing that will rock the boat?

Or, do we come ready (Morley asks) and open to see God’s expectations manifest themselves before our very eyes?”  Do we come, I wonder, seeking to know more clearly how we fit into God’s realm, God’s dream?  Do we come hoping to define our own dreams and passions that lie within that sacred dream? Do we come intent on being co-creators with God of a transformed world?

In our worship series over the next few weeks, we are going to connect with that creativity that lies within each one of us.  We will nurture this all too often forgotten but foundational aspect of being human.

We are going to explore what it means to be a co-creator with God.  We are going to affirm our birthright:  to imagine and create.  We will have opportunities here in worship to really think about questions like these:  What brings you alive?  What truly moves your soul in the very deepest way?  

So often our lives are dictated by being “driven’ rather than by being “drawn in”. We focus so much on what we “should” do and so little on what we feel excited about and compelled to do in our lives and in our world. In our worship series, we will hopefully uncover reborn, resurrected, renewed energy for ministry that reflects our passions, so that we are better able to do some creative problem solving to make our world a better place for all.  

And because we are a faith community, we also will reflect on the creativity inherent in us as a congregation.  What are our passions as a church community?  What is holding us back from letting our gifts and talents create a path forward for us? 

Is it a fear of change?  Is it anxiety about letting go of ministries and programs that have perhaps run their course and no longer meet the needs of our community and those to whom we seek to minister? Is it trusting that indeed, just as the Spirit of God hovered over the abyss, the void, the nothingness, the waters of the deep at the moment of creation, just as the Spirit of the Lord was upon Jesus, so the Holy Spirit is swirling about these four walls, waiting to guide and to lead us forward.   

American religious author Diana Butler Bass wrote: “Faith communities are often consumed with memories of the past and hopes for the future. Speaking of the past may take a form of maintaining buildings and structures, of teaching ancient texts, and passing on patterns of life and values from ancestors. Speaking of the future is often wrapped up in hopes for salvation and eternal life, desires for answered prayers, for the children to hold onto faith or "come back to church." 

Both past and future are important to vibrant communities; healthy and life-giving practices of honoring our ancestors and embracing a hopeful future derive from the witness of the whole biblical tradition.  But both "past" and "future" as the primary location of faith have their shadow sides (Bass writes). Overemphasizing the past results in nostalgia - the belief that the past is better than either the present or the future - a disposition that is steeped in grief and fear. Overemphasizing the future -the belief that all that matters is that which is to come - often results in thwarted hope, doubt, and anxiety…..

But (a belief in the power of) "today" is a deeply dangerous spiritual reality - because today insists that we lay aside both our memories and our dreams to embrace fully the moment of now. (Bass concludes that) the past romanticizes the work of our ancestors; the future scans the horizons of our descendants and depends upon them to fix everything. But "today" places us in the midst of the sacred drama, reminding usthat we are actors and agents in God's (dream) for the world. ‘Today’ is the most radical thing (Bass writes that) Jesus ever said.”

So – over the next few weeks, we are going to be radical.  We are going to be -  heaven forbid – revolutionary in our thinking and being and doing.  We are going to embrace our creativity.  

We are going to celebrate our partnership with God.  We are going to reflect on our passions, what makes us come alive, and just how those passions might further the ministries of our church.  

We are not going to throw away the past.  We are not going to disregard the future, but we are going to affirm today.  We are going to see what it would be like to dare to dream bigger – because, well, because with God, the sky is the limit, as we say.  We are going to dream God’s dream – along with God – and we are going to embrace the same Spirit that hovered over the abyss, the void, the nothingness, the waters of the deep, the same Spirit that hovered over Jesus in that synagogue long ago.

John 20:1-18 "The Easter Question"

         An Uber driver picked up a passenger.  They drove in silence for a long while – the driver, of course, in the front seat, and the passenger right behind him in the back.  As the many miles went, by, the passenger leaned over to ask the driver a question and gently tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.

The driver in turn screamed, lost control of the car, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb, and stopped just inches from a large plate glass store window. For a few moments, everything was silent in the car. 

Then, the visibly shaking driver took a deep breath and said to his passenger, "Are you OK? You scared the living daylights out of me."

The equally shaken up passenger apologized to the driver and said, "I am so sorry.  I did not realize that a mere tap on the shoulder would startle someone so badly."

"No, no, I'm the one who is sorry,” the driver replied.  “It is entirely my fault. You see, today is my first day driving for Uber.  For the past 25 years, I have been driving a hearse.”

Why do you come to church on Easter? After all, to be sitting here on these hard wooden pews is no longer one of our required cultural mores or a societal expectation.  

 Do you come to hear the preacher tell a faintly macabre but still funny joke?  Or to smell the sweet fragrance of lilies and see spring flowers actually in bloom?  Or to pretend that you are Pavarotti singing the Hallelujah Chorus with great gusto? Or because your spouse or mother reminded you that the last time you were in church was Christmas Eve? 

Or do you come because you have experienced the world to be a pretty dark place these days, and you have tried everything else and wonder if maybe the preacher will say something – anything – that will bring meaning and perspective to it all?  Why do you come to church on Easter?

If you come for the faintly macabre but still funny joke, well, you heard it.  If you come for the lilies and spring flowers, what you smell and see is what you get.  If you come to imagine yourself as Pavarotti singing the Hallelujah Chorus with great gusto, hang tight.  And if you come because your spouse or mother reminded you that the last time you were in church was Christmas Eve – well, that is between you and your spouse or mother.

However, if you come because you have experienced the world as a pretty dark place these days – what with the release of the Mueller Report, the pain and suffering on our Southern border, too many tweets, and so much fake news you do not really know who to believe, and, to top it off, the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris this past Holy Week, which seems, as blogger Christine Sine notes, “to spread a pall of smoke over all our good intentions and unfulfilled dreams.” If you have come for that reason, then you are not all that different from Mary when she set out for the garden tomb where Jesus had been hastily buried just three days before.  

Three of the Gospel accounts (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) tell us that the women waited until sunrise, or first light, or the breaking dawn to show up with their funeral spices.  But not the Gospel of John: for this Gospel writer, Mary tiptoed into the graveyard while it was still dark – still dark - a metaphor for her world.  No sunlight on the horizon yet, and she was afraid to even ask what will become the Easter question: In a world as dark as this one, is there any hope? 

The Easter story begins where Friday’s story left off – in bleak and gloomy sorrow, in black despair, in the midst of death and broken dreams.  All that Jesus stood for – compassion, non-violence, forgiveness - had been put on trial and found wanting.  

When Jesus cried out in pain and breathed his last, the disciples’ vision for a future free of Roman oppression and of the poor being ground to dust under imperial feet died right along with him. As Reformed pastor Scott Hoezee noted, “Easter may lead to the light, but it begins in the darkness. Easter may ultimately be about things that are high, bright, light, and clear, but it begins in things that are low, dim, dark, and murky.”

All that being said, who knows why Mary would have wanted to go to the tomb anyway?  After all, the now eleven disciples could be found either fitfully sleeping off the effects of Friday and Saturday or crying into their morning coffee cups.  That, it would seem, was the best way to deal with a bad situation.

Maybe Mary kept tossing and turning and figured that actually seeing the grave and touching the cold rock that covered it would bring closure, trigger some good old-fashioned weeping and unbridled grief that would do her good. Who knows what she expected to accomplish – or to find, for that matter? One thing we can say for sure though is that she certainly was not expecting to find an empty tomb. That much is clear.  

As Christian author and Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor writes,  "Resurrection [unlike springtime]...is entirely unnatural. When a human being goes into the ground, that is that....You say good-bye....and you go on with your life as best you can, knowing that the only place springtime happens in a cemetery is on the graves, not in them...." Her eyes dim with tears and carrying a hankie then, Mary resolutely walked to the cemetery and picked her way - in the dark - among the headstones until she came to Jesus’ grave.  

There she discovered only a big gaping hole that left his tomb wide open.  Horrified, she dropped her hankie, saw no need to investigate further, and immediately turned tail and ran to get help.  The clues were obvious – grave robbers.  One more sign of darkness in a world that was already too dark. “They have taken my Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him,” she declared to Peter and the other disciple.  

The two of them hightailed it back to the graveyard with Mary, presumably to check out her terrible news.  After all, you cannot always trust a hysterical woman when it comes to empty tombs and bodies disappearing! 

Like the good detectives they fancied themselves to be, Peter and the other disciple took the matter in hand and confirmed that, yup, the stone is gone, yup, the corpse is gone too.  

Odd thing about the burial linens though – still there and all folded up to boot.  Makes no sense, so they scratched their heads and stroked their beards, looking very serious.

As Hoezee notes, “Scholars claim that it is highly unlikely some ancient grave robber would have taken the time required to unwrap a well-embalmed corpse. Thieves are usually interested in speed so as to reduce the chances of getting caught. And anyway, (earlier) we were told that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea had slicked up Jesus' body with aloe and myrrh (a lot of it: nearly seventy-five pounds). 

Again, scholars claim that would have caused the grave wrappings to stick to Jesus' corpse like glue. But even if some thief did the highly unlikely and arduous thing of unwrapping the dead body, you would not expect him to then be so tidy as to fold and roll up everything in the orderly fashion Peter and (the other disciple) found.”

The Gospel writer tells us that the other disciple understood, but does not say exactly what he understood: That Mary’s story was true and maybe you could believe a woman every now and then? Peter apparently was confused by everything.  In the end, the two men went home for a second cup of coffee – and left the hapless women to her weeping in the garden.  And it is still dark.

Mary, however, was determined to get to the bottom of these nocturnal shenanigans, so she peeked into the tomb.  That was when she saw two angels who asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”  

Her answer was unchanged:  “They have taken my Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him.”  And to herself she posed what would become the Easter question:  In a world as dark as this one, is there any hope?

The angels were silent and so not much help. It was still dark when Mary turned to man who appeared to be the graveyard gardener getting an early start on the day. 

Once more, she heard the same question: “Woman, why are you weeping?”  Her answer remained consistent, but it was more of plea this time, spoken in a whisper from the very darkest part of her soul: “If you took him away, please just tell me where he is.”

And the man answered not with a GPS location of the corpse, but rather with her name, “Mary!” 

Stunned, she replied, “Rabboni!”  

 And in that moment of recognition, in that moment when hope was restored in a dark world and what would become the Easter question was answered with a resounding yes – yes, in a world as dark as this one, there is hope.  Yes, there is hope because Jesus the Christ lives and all he stood for lives. Only in that moment of restored hope did the first rays of the sun hit the cold rock tomb and bath Jesus and Mary in its warmth and light.

You know, we can speculate endlessly about the historical facts of the resurrection.  Except to do so is pointless because the details we have are so varied and scattered throughout each of the four Gospel accounts – everything from the number of women who ended up in the cemetery and who they were to whether or not the tomb was being guarded by Roman soldiers to whether one angel (or was it two?) were in the tomb or outside of the tomb, or maybe they were men who looked like angels – and were the women frightened or joyful, a little of both, or simply confused?  The Gospel of Matthew even says there was an earthquake.  

Worrying about the technical details is rather like trying to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  And 17^thcentury theologians concluded, counting angels is a colossal waste of time and energy –  and I would say the same applies to trying to determine the process of resurrection!  We each have a life to live with meaning and purpose, and that should be planty to keep us occupied.  And besides,  what happens in the dark will stay in the dark.

All I know – and perhaps deep down inside you sense it too or you would not be here (jokes, lilies and spring flowers, and the Hallelujah Chorus aside) – all I know is that something happened in the dark that first Easter morning: Something happened that restored hope in a world that seemed so dark, restored hope when all hope for the future had been dashed.  

In the early part of World War II, I have been told, a Navy submarine was stuck on the bottom of the New York City harbor. It seemed that all was lost. There was no electricity, and the oxygen was quickly running out. In one last attempt to rescue the sailors from their steel coffin, the Navy sent a ship equipped with divers to the spot on the surface, directly above the disabled submarine. 

A Navy diver descended to the dangerous depths in one last rescue attempt. The trapped sailors heard the metal boots of the diver on the exterior surface, and they moved to where they thought the rescuer would be. 

In the darkness they tapped in Morse code, "Is there any hope?" 

The diver, recognizing the message, signaled by tapping on the exterior of the sub, "Yes, there is hope."

Surely that is the message of Easter we desperately need this year.  Surely it is the answer to what has become the Easter question:  In a world as dark as this one, is there any hope?  And the answer is yes, there is hope.

There is hope because long ago God said yes to Jesus and no to the authoritarian system of the Roman Empire. There is hope because God said yes to the power of love and no to the power of indifference, petty jealousies, resentment, and hate.  There is hope because God said yes to all that Jesus stood for – justice, compassion, mercy - and no to the powers of the world – economic inequity, violence, and oppressive power.  Hope was restored that first Easter morning, and, because of whatever happened in that garden graveyard, that restored hope has cascaded down through the ages to us now.

         The resurrection is not a one-time event that occurred in a first century Palestinian cemetery in the dark and is, for us, only a debate in historical literalness..  No – whatever happened that morning that we confidently and faithfully as Christians call resurrection answered once and for all  what has become the Easter question once and for all:  IN a world as dark as this one, is there any hope? 

And the answer is yes – always yes, even in the darkest of times.  What matters then is not what actually happened in the cemetery garden and what all the technical details were.  What matters is what happens now, today, when each one of you leaves this church – after the preacher has told the faintly macabre but still funny Easter joke, after the lilies and springtime flowers have all been taken home, after you have felt like Pavarotti for a few minutes and the Hallelujah Chorus has been sung.  

You see, because of the resurrection, God has given us a legacy.  And because you showed up here today – for whatever reason - you are now part of that legacy.  From now on, you have been called to be people of hope in a world of darkness, living each day as if the answer to the Easter question really matters, living each day as a resounding “yes”.  

You have been called to be people of hope – and if it is too difficult to use the image of a Risen Christ to live out that restored hope, then maybe you can imagine instead a burned cathedral in Paris - believing that, in God’s good time, it will be rebuilt, and a new life will emerge from its ashes. Notre Dame is a fitting metaphor for Easter – lifting up its message that we so desperately need this year.

Go forth then, be a productive and willing part of the legacy you now own, and answer the call to be people of hope by placing that hope in all that Jesus stood for – hope in the power of compassion, hope in the power of reconciliation, hope in the power of justice, hope in the power of God’s dream for this world. It is the only way you and I will be rebuilt. It is the only way we will survive.  

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Ecclesiastes 3:1-13 "Time"

 Imagine this scenario: The bank calls you on Friday afternoon to tell you that someone is going to deposit – on a daily basis - 86,400 pennies into your account starting on Monday morning. Do the math: That is $864 a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

What an incredible windfall!  And it is not even from winning Powerball or the Maine Lottery! You are one lucky dude!  

However, there is one stipulation.  You have to spend all the money the same day it is deposited. No balance will be carried over to the next day. Each evening the bank will cancel whatever sum you did not use.  Use it or lose it!

Do the math:  $864 times seven days is over $6000 a week and almost $315,000 a year at your disposal. What’s not to like about that, right?

Now let’s change the scenario just slightly – to make it more believable, to actually make it a real life situation.  Every morning a deposit of 86,400 seconds is deposited into your time account.  Do the math: That is 440 minutes which is 24 hours. 

And the same stipulation applies: Nothing is carried over to the next day. There is no such thing as a 26 hour day (no matter how much we might wish otherwise at times). 

From today’s dawn until tomorrow’s dawn, we all have that same precisely determined amount of time.  As someone once said:  “Life is a coin. You can spend it any way you want to, but you spend it only once”

I agree with Albert Einstein:  Time is an amazing phenomenon! We all are given the same amount each day, and, in that sense, we are all equal. We get 86,400 seconds deposited in our time account whether we are a penniless nobody or Bill Gates, whether we are old or young, whether we are married or single, whether we are Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindi, Buddhist.  It does not matter who we are.  It is only matters  what we choose to do with that which we are given.

We cannot escape time.  It invades our every move:  “What time does the meeting start”  “What time will it end” “I don’t have time for that” “How much time will that take” “Don’t waste your time on that” “It’s time to go” “I need a time out” “What time is dinner” “It’s time we had a long talk” “I don’t have time.” 

As Baptist pastor, Elmer Towns, noted, “God has given the gift of time to every person (in every place and in every era). God has given us yesterday, today, and maybe tomorrow.”  It is up to us to make today – this day – count.

We have spent five weeks now here in church trying to reconcile our fast-paced and often frenetic lifestyles with the idea of slowing down to make each day count..  We have hoped to deepen our spirituality and make the season of Lent more meaningful. 

We have attempted to create moments here in worship for silence and stillness, moments to be “unbusy”.  We have experimented with strategies to incorporate into our lives that could help us reconnect with one another and with our unhurried God.  We have focused on finding our quiet center, and we have approached this quest from several angles.  And now we have finally come round to talking seriously and directly about time.  

Over these weeks in Lent, if we have learned nothing else, I hope we have realized that to find our quiet center, it is helpful to engage in those traditional Lenten rituals, but in new ways.  Rather than fasting from food, we need to fast from worry and fear.  Rather than rotely confessing our sins, we need to be more broadly self-reflective.  

Rather than isolating and insulating ourselves from the world, we need to be intentional about our use of time in the world. None of these Lenten rituals comes easy in our culture.  We so highly value busyness, productivity, and multi-tasking and too often devalue the intentional use of our time.

That’s nothing new though.  As a species, we have always been fixated on time.  More than that, our need to be precise in our understanding of the passage of time has increased astronomically through the ages. Egyptians were content to use sundials in 3500 BCE simply to ascertain the arrival of the spring planting season – nothing more. Likewise, Stonehenge was built about 2000 BCE, but only to mark the annual summer and winter solstices.  

More precise measures of time were introduced in the Middle Ages.  Candles were made with time markings etched into the wax or tallow. The first mechanical clocks appeared in England in 1368 followed by the first public clock tower in 1541.  Not long afterwards, clock towers began to rival churches in town squares.  In 1577, the minute hand was invented, and a watch-making industry was thriving in Geneva, Switzerland within the next ten years.  

Humanity was learning that time flies, so it is best to be productive in order to get one’s work done. Time was no longer tied to the seasons of the year, but rather to the watch on your wrist or the hourly chiming of the clock tower in the village square.  

Medieval monastics tried their best to maintain the rhythm and seasonality of life even as marking time by the hour and minute became more important to a faster-moving society.  They ably incorporated their secular chores into worship times throughout the day, creating a sense of holy rhythm  and wholeness as work and worship became two sides of the same coin.  I remember spending time in a Benedictine monastery when I was in Divinity School and experiencing that same sense of wholeness. It was a marvelous feeling of the natural ebb and flow of creation.  

In addition, some of these monastics created Books of Hours which were beautifully illustrated abbreviated forms of the daily liturgies for laypeople.  In fact, from the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century, more books of hours were made than any other type of book.  The tension we feel today between the inevitable passage of time and the need to reclaim that natural sense of rhythm and seasonality is nothing new!  

However, for us, finding that natural sense of rhythm and seasonality in our busy lives is often well-nigh impossible.  Imagine:  We determine who wins or loses a running or swimming race by a hundredth of a second. We measure computer memory speed in nanoseconds.  And now we even have zeptoseconds – a trillionth of a billionth of a second.

How long ago it seems that, as time inevitably passed from season to season, we flowed freely with it, accepting its moments of joy and times of sorrow, and never believing that we did not have enough of it – or that it was essential to measure it so minutely.  Surely that is what the author of the passage in Ecclesiastes was reflecting on.   “For everything there is a season…”  The good and the bad flowed through life, and it was up to us to ride the waves of life and death, of mourning and dancing, of laughing and weeping.   

Presbyterian pastor Joanna Adams tells the story of a preacher whose congregation adored him because he always finished his worship services right at noon, within the allotted 60 minutes for church. Then one Sunday, the impossible happened. The pastor preached until 12:30.

On the way out, one of his parishioners angrily inquired, "What happened to you?"

The preacher answered, "For years I have always put a candy mint in my mouth as the service started, and I would tuck it away. It was always gone at exactly noon. That way, I never had to look at the clock or worry about what time it was. But this Sunday it didn't go away, and I finally realized I had put a button in my mouth."

All kidding aside, Adams does not deny the importance of time and notes that “knowing what time it is differentiates the foolish from the wise. Some hold on for dear life to that which is actually finished and done. Some refuse to let go of a relationship that has ceased to be nourishing. Others try to breathe life into, say, a church program that has been around for too long, but no one is brave enough to bury it.”  

She goes on to say that we all need to keep track of time. “There are deadlines to meet, buses to catch, papers to be turned in. Calendars and clocks have become our masters in modern society…. Surely much has been gained (she says) in terms of production and organization, but when life became divided and subdivided into seconds, minutes, and hours, many things were lost. We experience those losses every day (she continues). Our distance from the natural rhythms of life keeps increasing. Hardly anything is really seasonal. 

You can get tomatoes, summer's most luscious offering, anytime of the year now, though the ones you buy in January are likely to have been shipped 1,000 miles and will taste like cardboard. (She concludes that) we also live at an increasing distance from the ancient but timeless understanding that each day, each moment, is an unearned gift from a gracious God, rather than a commodity to be traded or spent for something else.”  The lines between busy and rest, work and play, have become increasingly blurred. And at what cost?

Even Jesus spoke of time – but not zeptoseconds.  “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” he preached, and “the time is fulfilled.”  Something bigger was at stake – God’s dream for the world.

         Though there is a time for everything, as the author of Ecclesiastes wrote,  surely Jesus would tell us that it is time to put aside our busyness and multitasking (just like he told Martha rattling around in the kitchen with her pots and pans), that it is time to let go of our worries and fears (remember the lilies in the field), that it is time to slow down and recognize that we move too fast, that it is time to reconnect with ourselves, our God, and one another in a deeper and more meaningful way. 

Surely it is time to make time to live into the essence of Jesus’ ministry.  As Adams wrote, “Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies; do good to those who persecute you.’ It is time, not to answer evil with evil and hate with hate, but a time to answer evil with love and hate with compassion. It is time for God’s dream for the world to become a reality.

         In the end, our Lenten series has nothing to do with stopping time by insulating ourselves from the world or even cocooning ourselves in our quiet center once we find it.  Instead, it has everything to do with living into the time we are given each day, living into the natural rhythm of all that Jesus stood for – compassion, reconciliation, radical welcome.

86,400 seconds in a day.  Do the math:  That is 525,600 minutes in a year.  That is all we are given, but it is enough to live as God challenges us to live.  Listen to this song from the musical, “Rent”. It says it well:

PLAY SEASONS OF LOVE

Let me end – not only this sermon but also this Lenten worship series with an ancient Sanskrit poem.  Tuck it away in your heart, and pull out when you are feeling frazzled, when worry and fear, when busyness and multitasking, are beginning to claim you:

                              "Listen to the salutation of the dawn... 

Look to this day, for it is the very life of life. 

In its brief course lie all the realities and truth of existence: 

the joy of growth, the splendor of action, the glory of power. 

For yesterday is but a memory, and tomorrow a vision, but today well-lived makes every yesterday a memory of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope."