The Stones Would Shout Out

Palm Sunday 2013

Luke 19:28-40; Is50:4-9; Psalm 31:9-16; Phil 2:5-11; Luke’s Passion Account

Father Adam Trambley

March 24, 2013, St.John’s Sharon

“It these were silent, the stones would shout out”

Back in Allen Hall, we started our grand procession to model Jesus’ parade from Bethany, down the Mount of Olives and up to Jerusalem.  The whole multitude of the disciples with Jesus is praising God with a loud voice for all the deeds of power they had seen – maybe not as boisterously as the bagpipes, but with as much oomph as they could muster.  Then the Pharisees, who aren’t sure about the whole Jesus enterprise and are nervous about “what people might think”, tell Jesus, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”  Jesus’ reply is startling.  He says, “If the people were silent, the stones would shout out.”

Silent stones laying between Jerusalem and Jericho

If the people were silent, the stones would shout out.  Maybe it’s hyperbole, but maybe not.  Just maybe, the triumphal entry of Son of God into the holy city requires the praise of God.  Just maybe, the mighty of acts of God call forth such joyful acclamation that if the people refuse to proclaim it, the most insignificant roadside rocks will reverberate, “Hosanna!”  Just maybe, the saving purposes of God are so momentous that neither stubborn silence, mute fear or even a carefully cultivated cluelessness can prevent the good news of Jesus Christ from being proclaimed to the people God is calling to himself.

That day when the disciples were lifting up their voices, they may have thought they were just giving God the glory for what they had seen.  But they were doing so much more.  That day when the disciples were lifting up their voices, they were announcing something yet to come, something they didn’t even realize, something that was going to scare their socks off and rock their world.  That day when the disciples were lifting up their voices, they were telling the world that the king was coming in the name of the Lord, that the peace in heaven and the glory in the highest heaven were spilling down into the holy city of Jerusalem, and that God’s people gathering to celebrate the saving deeds of God at the Passover hadn’t seen anything yet.   That day, when the disciples were lifting up their voices, is very similar to this day, when we can lift up our voices for the mighty acts of God we have seen and experienced.

We know the unbelievable love of God for us.  We have just heard how Jesus emptied himself, took human likeness and died on a cross for us, and even in the midst of his suffering he prays for his enemies, forgives his murders and brings sinners salvation.  We know that throughout the coming week we will remember and experience again Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, the way of his cross and passion, and finally the joy and power of his resurrection. 

Even beyond the great good news of what God has done in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we all can thank God for his many works in our own lives.  The protection and care as we’ve walked through the valley of the shadow of death.  The tough times when we found God provided enough to squeak by.  The peace, the love or the joy that enfolded us during a struggle to help us get through.  The gift of those nearest to us whom we love and who love us.  The miracles that we can only ascribe to God.  Any of these things would be enough for us to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for anyone to hear.

But we are also compelled to keep praising for those things God is about to do.  Just like when he was on the way into Jerusalem, we are praising Jesus who has some work to do in the Shenango Valley.  God knows his plans for this Valley, plans for its welfare and a hopeful future.  The good news of God’s future for us will be proclaimed as God comes to this valley, beginning with this place this morning.  If our voices are silent about God’s acts, then the stones will shout out.  

Jesus is going out with us into the highways and byways, the schools and the shops, the mills and the malls, the hospitals and the homes throughout Sharon and Hermitage and Masury and Sharpsville and Brookfield and Farrell and West Middlesex and Mercer and Hubbard and South Py, and wherever else we go out from here.  The grand procession of our King does not stop just because we leave the church and don’t have Ross wailing on the bagpipes in our backseats.  We take what we know of the mighty works of God and share them with others.  Everyone, beginning with those nearby and going out to the ends of the earth, needs to hear the glories of what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ so that they can discover what he is doing right now in their own lives.  The work that God has done for us already, and the salvation he has come to bring to this community, is such good news that creation can’t keep it inside.  Either we give voice to every creature under heaven and join with angels and archangels in their unending praise or the very stones of this church will shout out.  Regardless, God’s salvation will sweep though the Shenango Valley and the wider world.  But it is so much better for us to lift up our voices in praise and join in Jesus’ triumphal procession of saving, self-giving love, a procession that started on the Mount of Olives, moved into Jerusalem, stopped in Allen Hall, went down Irving Avenue, came into this sanctuary and will soon be moving out with you when you leave here this morning.  Lift up your voices in praise of God, or the stones will shout out.

I am the Resurrection and the Life

5 Lent 2013

Job 19:23-27a; Ps 16:5-11; Rom 8:6-11; John 11:1-45*

Father Adam Trambley

March 17, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

“I am the Resurrection and the Life”

I am the Resurrection and the Life

This morning, we look at one of Jesus’ statements about himself that is most important to us.  In many ways, the statement would be surprising if we weren’t so used to hearing it.  “I am the life,” makes perfect sense, and Jesus is called the life many times.  After all, he created us and sustains us and is the source of life for the entire universe.

But “I am the resurrection” is a bit trickier.  Resurrection implies something that has died and is returning to life.  We know that people had a hard time with the idea of the Jesus dying if he is the Messiah and the Savior of the world and the Son of God and all the other things he claimed to be. For many of us, that death still may not make as much sense as if God flipped a magic switch and kept him from dying.  Throughout church history various people have in fact claimed that Jesus Christ didn’t fully die – whether because he was in some drug induced death-like trance for three days or because God spirited him away right before death or whatever.  A Son of God who dies seems hard to accept.

Of course, on the other side, resurrection requires coming back from the dead, and well-meaning people in every age have cast doubt on Jesus returning to life.  Starting with Matthew’s gospel, we have reports of some people claiming the whole thing is a hoax by his disciples.  Others of a more rationalist bent refuse to go in for such miracles, but really do like Jesus’ teachings.  Still others just think we’re all nuts for believing any of it. 

The problem with either of those understandings, however, is that for Jesus to be the resurrection, he needs both to really die and really to rise.  As Christians we believe he did precisely that. 

This central tenant of our faith is important for us because we are all going to die.  We don’t last forever.  At some point before sin and brokenness came, we may have been destined for eternity as we were, but that way of being was lost a long time ago.  Instead, we are corruptible, fragile souls, with bodies and spirits that are not quite up to snuff.  While God could certainly throw us all onto the cosmic scrap heap to start over, he doesn’t.  Jesus’ own resurrection is the assurance that God has an eternal future planned for his loving children even after they die.  Jesus doesn’t say, “I am the divine-detailer-of-low-mileage-models-that-need-a-tune-up and the life.”  He says, “I am the resurrection, pulling-the-rusted-hunks-out-of-the-depths-of-the-junkyard and the life.”   Resurrection means that we don’t have to be sort of OK for God to bring us into eternal life.  We can be totally dead, decomposed, eaten by worms, ashes scattered, whatever, as well as not being anything near perfect when we were alive, and still come to the Resurrection and the Life in Jesus Christ.  Resurrection is not in us, but wholly from Jesus. 

Jesus in today’s gospel brings Lazarus from the dead.  After Lazarus’s death, Jesus comes to town and Lazarus’s sister Martha comes to meet him.  Obviously she is upset that her brother is dead, and maybe a bit annoyed that Jesus who healed all sorts of people hadn’t come in time to heal her brother.  She tells him so, in a polite way, while also noting that God would give him whatever he asks, in case he might still be able to ask for something.  Jesus response is that, “Your brother will rise,” but she isn’t immediately comforted.  It sounds like the kind of thing you say to people who are mourning, like we would say, “He’s in a better place.”  The statement is true, and we believe it, but that’s not the same as saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll bring him out of the grave for you in time for tea.”  Martha says to Jesus, “Yeah, I know.  In the resurrection on the last day.”  Scripture doesn’t record her expression, which may very well have been, “but that’s not really what I’m hoping for.”  Then Jesus lays it all out: “I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”  Martha says she believes this, and then Jesus goes out to call forth Lazarus from the tomb. 

Now Jesus as the Resurrection is not really about bringing Lazarus out of the tomb.  Lazarus isn’t raised finally to eternal life.  Jesus restores him to life, but it is to this life.  He will die again.  He had died prematurely, and Jesus brings him back from death.  But the raising of Lazarus is not the resurrection that is our hope.  The raising of Lazarus is a sign that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life that he claims.  Lazarus is an arrow pointing to Jesus to help us believe. 

The real resurrection is what Martha and Jesus are talking about, and there are two components.  The first is the resurrection on the last day.  Every time we recite the creeds, we say that we believe in the resurrection of the body.  Christians believe what Martha believed, that we are not really some sort of spiritual beings stuck in a body that dies before the important part of us goes off into a ghostly heaven.  No, we believe that our bodies are an integral part of who we are, and that in the end our bodies are resurrected and we live out eternity as embodied beings.  Our resurrected bodies are going to be like Jesus resurrected bodies – incorruptible and better in ways we can’t fully describe – but they are also going to have some connection to who we are now.  If we take Jesus’ example, we are also going to be able to do some things we do today, like eat.  This resurrection to a full, better life than we have now is what Jesus as the Resurrection and Life offers to bring.

The second component of Jesus as Resurrection and Life is that those who believe in him never die.  This saying is difficult, because we see believers die regularly.  But Jesus is offering something else.  Jesus is offering an ongoing spiritual life for those who believe.  When we die, we are delivered from death into something else, something that comes before the general resurrection.  We don’t just die and wait in death for resurrection, as Martha believed.  Jesus broke the bonds of death during his own death and resurrection, so that now we are delivered before death into a place of life while we await Jesus’ final return and resurrection of the body.  Paul is describing this in our Romans reading when he says that if we have Christ, even though the body is dead, the Spirit of life remains in us.  We don’t actually die, we just are somewhere else, but eventually that same Holy Spirit of Christ will then give life to our mortal bodies.  Our immortal soul doesn’t just ditch our bodies when we die.  Instead, Jesus living in us keeps us alive in the Spirit when our mortal bodies die until our bodies themselves are raised to an incorruptible, eternal life.

In your bulletin is a sixteenth century Russian icon that captures who Jesus is and what he does as the resurrection.  Jesus is standing on the broken white gates of death and hell, and if you look closely you can see the broken chains and bonds of death underneath him in the black background.  Adam and Eve are beside him and he is raising them out of their tombs.  Notice that Adam just has his hand outstretched and Jesus has grasped his arm – all the active effort is Jesus’ because he does all the work.  In Jesus’ left hand is a scroll, depicting the message of salvation he brings to the souls in death.  Behind Jesus is a big blue egg, a symbol of life and resurrection.  Jesus’ white cape is flying upwards behind him, to show that he is descending down to lift us up.  On the left side are Kings David and Solomon and John the Baptist, depicting Old Testament figures Jesus brings from death, while on the right are those of Jesus time.  Above Jesus are the angels holding a cross and a chalice, representing the instruments that Jesus uses to deliver us from the grave.

I would encourage you to take this icon home and use it for meditation during the end of Lent, Holy Week and Easter as a way to call to mind how Jesus comes down to us and lifts us out of death into eternal life.  Not only does he do this at the last day at our final resurrection, he is also reaching down and pulling us out of all the little deaths of sin and suffering we find ourselves in during the course of our life.  Like those who have used it over the past five-hundred years, we can pray with this icon to draw closer to Jesus who promises us…

“I am the resurrection and the life.” 

*Note: with permission of bishop we are using alternative readings this Lent to focus on “Who is Jesus?”

I am the Way

4 Lent 2013

Micah 4:1-5; Psalm 19; Gal 5:16-24; John 14:1-7*

Father Adam Trambley

March 10, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

“I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life”

I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.

This morning we look at the question of “Who is Jesus?” from the perspective of Jesus’ role in leading us to the Father in who he was and through his teaching. 

Jesus is the Way, so much so that early Christians referred to their fellowship as the Way.  Specifically, he is the way to the Father.  Following that way of Jesus is also truth and life for us, as we know him and go to the Father with him.

The first step along the way is a relationship with Jesus.  He says that, “If you know me, you will know my Father also.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.”  Jesus says that seeing him is like seeing the Father.  They are the same.  The difference is that Jesus came to dwell on earth and the Father remained in heaven.  Too often, when we try to picture God the Father, we think about some white-haired, old guy, and we think of Jesus as a younger thirty-three-year-old that looks very different.  Now if it helps you to think of God the Father as Santa Claus sending the gift of salvation by his Son, we can probably work with that.  But scripture tells us that looking at Jesus is the same as looking at the Father, the only difference being that we can see Jesus.  If we want to picture the Father in our minds, we should probably picture him looking like Jesus.  Have you ever seen photos of a father and son who look identical at the same age, but now one looks older and more grey-haired?  Think the same thing about Jesus’ Father, only he never developed age lines or grey hair, because why would he?  Do you think that being King of the Universe causes God too much stress that his hair turns grey and falls out?  Of course not – that’s why he’s God!

Jesus is so much like his Father in every way that just knowing him and relating to him tells us how to relate to God the Father.  When we do what would make Jesus’ happy, we are doing what would make the Father happy.  When we structure our lives in accordance with what Jesus told us, our lives become what the Father wants for us.  When we serve the least of our brothers and sisters so that we serve Jesus, we are serving the Father also.  

Part of how we come to Jesus as the Way is by living the way he taught us.  The Way is a person, but that person is also the fulfillment of God’s path to life given to us to follow.  Heeding his teaching and example is how we follow his way to fullness of truth and life in God.

We might think about our way to God historically in three phases.  Before human beings sinned, we were in the garden and we walked with God.  People had a direct relationship with him and knew him.  After we sinned, God gave us the law, called in Hebrew the Torah.  Although the Torah contained rules, it was not meant to be so much of a legal code as a path to life with God.  Psalm 19 is a hymn to the beauty of the law to the Jewish people – sweeter than honey; more to be desired than fine gold; enlightening the eyes, rejoicing the heart.  Good stuff, but the problem was that the law itself didn’t give people the ability to keep it.  Too many people went from following the law as a living path to God to using it as a way to build up religious institutions and control people.   The outer law was lifted up, but what God really wanted was people’s hearts.  (This false outer piety is always a problem for good standards of behavior, and creeps into Christian ideals, too often, as well.)

Since the law could not save or keep us on its path itself, Jesus came as the way and as the Good Shepherd.  Last week we talked about Jesus as the Good Shepherd with his rod and his staff able to keep us on the path.  This guiding role is no small thing for us.  When we stray, and sometimes we all stray, God comes to find us and drag us back onto the right road.  Often we still struggle.  Sometimes we go kicking and screaming.  Sometimes, I think Jesus waits and watches us as we throw a fit, keeping the wolves away as long as possible until we settle down and he can pick us up and carry us home. 

Most of you have heard the poem footprints, about how someone sees two sets of footprints on the beach, except sometimes there is only one set.  Jesus says that we walked together but where there is one set, I was carrying you.  I recently heard an addendum about places where there was one set of footprints and a line next to them, and Jesus said, “That’s where I had to drag you on your butt kicking and screaming.”  Thankfully, the Good Shepherd knows how to use the rod and staff when necessary.

Jesus comes, then, able to save us and keep us on the way to the Father.  As the way, Jesus has also given us some pretty good directions.  Most of what he says deals with a revolution of the heart.  Although Jesus is pretty clearly against certain behaviors, he is usually focused on our motivations and what is happening inside of us.  He calls us to transform our hearts into the same loving hearts that he has, and then follow where that love leads us.  That amazing, unconditional, extravagant, self-giving love is the crux both of Jesus’ example and his teaching. 

Think about the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus doesn’t just want us not to kill people or commit adultery.  He wants us to love people enough not to look on them scornfully in our own minds or even to call them names.  He wants us to go beyond fairness and be taken advantage of by others – turning the other cheek or giving beyond what is stolen from us out of love for someone else.  He tells us to meet the needs of the hungry and the homeless and the prisoner and the sick and others who can never give back to us in return, even when it costs us.  He tells us to forgive others, even if they are killing us.  And everything he tells us to do, he does himself.

None of this path of Jesus is easy.  But if we spend our time getting close to him, his love fills our hearts and we become more and more able to love like him.  The great spiritual disciplines are all designed to help us draw closer to Jesus and be more Christ-like.  Our time in prayer, in Bible study, in church, confessing our sins and encouraging each other, fasting, giving, practicing love by serving one another, and anything else fruitful that we do for God all help us come closer to Jesus so that our hearts can become as love-filled as his. 

As our hearts overflow with God’s love, our lives exhibit the same qualities of love that Jesus’ live showed.  What we want to do becomes what God wants us to do because we are acting from love, and those acts take us along the path to God because they are what Jesus would do if he were us.  We get closer to Jesus and we smoothly follow in his way, and that way leads us to the Father because Jesus is the way to the Father.  The shepherd’s crook is needed less as the Shepherd’s heart is heeded more. 

Before we end today, one question I want to address that frequently comes up about Jesus’ statement in today’s Gospel.  Jesus says he is the way and “No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Does this mean that non-Christians cannot be saved?  Some Christians say very clearly that if you aren’t baptized or if you haven’t accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior you are in hell for eternity.  That position seems to me to move a bit beyond what Jesus is saying.  I think the ultimate answer is that we don’t know for sure, but there are a couple of things we can say.  First, Christians who have been baptized and who follow Jesus as their Lord, living out his instructions and confessing their sins when they fall short are promised an inheritance in God’s heavenly kingdom.  If we are disciples of Jesus, we don’t need to worry about our future, and that is a very good position to be in, and is a position we would want everyone to be in.  Second, anyone who comes to God comes through Jesus.  All religions are not the same and Jesus is not the same as Buddha who is not the same as Mohammed who is not the same as Krishna who is not the same as Moses.  The great teachers and prophets of other religious traditions may be great teachers and prophets, and may even have had a genuine message of how to live in a more godly way for their people, but only Jesus reconciled humanity to God through his incarnation, life, death and resurrection.  If those of others religions are saved, they are saved because of the work that Jesus did and because somehow they have finally come to him.  Personally, I like the way C.S. Lewis describes it in The Last Battle, where the Christ-figure Aslan accepts as devotion to himself the well-lived life of love from those worshipping other Gods.  The other gods are demons, not God, but the people trying their best are given the divine benefit of the doubt.  When they die and see him as he is, they can then accept or reject him, and those who tried to live lives of love accept him.  I believe everyone will have a similar opportunity to meet Jesus as judge on the last day, and those who decide to love and follow him will have a place in heaven.  Not everyone sees it this way, but to me this understanding seems to take seriously both God’s saving love and human freedom.  Of course, those of us who know and follow Jesus now begin to receive the blessings of his eternal life immediately, and will easily recognize him when he comes again.  That blessing is no small thing, and we want to share that joy with everyone as soon as possible, bringing them to Jesus,

who says, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.”

*Note: with permission of bishop we are using alternative readings this Lent to focus on “Who is Jesus?”