Building

Still on vacation. Here's the first chapter of another book I am working on. 

He was beautiful. His feathers, his bearing, his magnificent comb. He strutted along the stone street, pushing out his chest, stopping to flap his wings and crow, telling the world, “Look at me! I am king of this corner of the street!” Or perhaps he was saying, “Ladies! Look how handsome and virile I am! I can give you many strong chicks!” He was definitely saying, “Look out, all rivals! I will peck and shred you to pieces if you enter my territory and molest my harem!” And as if to back that up he would swing his head around, displaying his lost eye. He had suffered a grievous wound but he had won. The rooster was beautiful.

“Was” being the precise word. One-eyed Yaakov had been conspicuously absent when Yeshua and Yosef arrived at the work site. Instead there was another rooster marching around, swinging his head to and fro, surveying his new kingdom. Where was Yaakov? Yeshua looked about the building site. He did a quick circuit of the unfinished walls. He was about to give up when he heard a piteous sound from behind a bush. Yeshua stepped around to the back and found Yaakov, or what was left of him. His lovely plumage was ravaged and missing. The naked spots were bleeding, one wing seemed barely attached to his body and the once proud cock cowered before the boy. Could he help him? Yeshua asked himself. Should he? He was not a nice bird when he was in power. Yeshua remembered how he would mount the hens and how they protested when he did.

He did not seem to care about his offspring either. The hens did. Yeshua remembered the day a hawk swooped down and grabbed a chick and took off, all in one motion. And the chick's mother shrieked and suddenly launched herself into the air, 3, maybe 4 cubits up. It startled Yeshua who previously did not think chickens could fly that high. It startled the hawk, too, and it dropped the chick as quickly as it had snatched it. The tiny thing fell to the ground and the hen landed and rushed over. The chick righted itself, shook its head and was apparently okay. The hen clucked and called her brood and all the chicks ran to her. She fluffed herself up and they burrowed under her wings and body. They stayed that way a while, the hen scanning the sky for further threats.

One-eyed Yaakov had looked impressive, though that plain brown hen was more so in her actions. So did the rooster deserve mercy?

Suddenly a hand grabbed the rooster and with a practiced motion, wrung his neck. The woman looked at Yaakov's limp corpse appraisingly and walked back to her house, the body and legs swinging as she went. Yaakov's end could not be more ignominious. But at least he would nourish a family.

Yeshua returned to his father, who was rummaging around in his wooden toolbox for what he needed. Yeshua knelt at his own toolbox. Yosef had made it for him as a present at his Bar Mitzvah. “Today you are a man. You deserve a place to put a man's tools.” It was a fine piece of carpentry. Yosef had put a lot of work into it. He had even carved Yeshua's name into the side. The vav was a little higher than the other letters which bothered Yeshua at first. He was used to the careful way the letters of the Torah were written in their synagogue's scrolls. But eventually he came to love the quirky look of his father's writing. He made it for him and put his name on it. It was a delight to look at.

Or it had been at first. But it was now scratched, and the corners had been nicked and dented. That was because he used it every single day. Well, every day but Shabbat. Yeshua had tried to sand out the first scratch the box had received but it was too deep and his efforts to erase the scar just made it look worse. His father's toolbox was even more battered. Who was he to think he deserved better than his father?

“What are we doing today, Father?”

“I'm supervising laying the stones on the west side. Why don't you finish dressing this stone here that you started on yesterday,” said Yosef. Yeshua got his mallet and chisel. As tektons, the word the Greek-speaking foreman used of them, Yosef and Yeshua were jacks of all trades. If carpentry was needed, they were carpenters. If stone work was needed, they acted as masons. If the job was building, they were builders. Today they would be working on the stones, Yosef making sure they fit together when put in place.

The morning was spent chipping away at the massive building stones. It had to look good because this was the house of an important man. And he was important in Sepphoris, which was the most important city in Galilee. Ever since he began as an apprentice to his father, Yeshua had been coming to Sepphoris. He had seen it grow from a few buildings to what could justifiably be called the “ornament of Galilee,” Herod Antipas' favorite description of it. Yeshua wished he could have seen the city from the very beginning of the project. He knew it had been ruins. When Antipas' father, Herod the Great, died, a bandit named Yudah had taken over the city and declared it to be in revolt against Rome. Varus, the Roman governor of Syria, burned the city to the ground. It is said that he sold all the women and children who inhabited it into slavery and crucified all the men. All 2000 of them. That part Yeshua knew to be true. When he first began accompanying Yosef to Sepphoris, he asked his father about all the stripped trees and wooden uprights he saw along the road to the city. Yosef did not want to talk about it. So when they took lunch Yeshua asked the other men at the work site. Some remembered those days but like Yosef, they were reluctant to talk about them. One older man did eventually talk to Yeshua. He spoke quietly of all those men writhing for days on the crosses until they died. Then the birds and scavengers came. They ate the men, just as that woman and her family were going to eat Yaakov. Yeshua was silent the rest of that day.

One might have thought it was the horror of what the Romans had done that rendered Yeshua mute. And it was, but Yeshua's thoughts went even deeper into the evil of it. As a tekton, Yeshua realized that crosses didn't just happen. Someone long ago had to come up with the idea of killing people in that way. Then they or someone else had to work out the practical aspects of designing one. And someone else had to make the first one. And then someone had to carry out the first crucifixion. And it seemed like the Romans kept changing how they did it, experimenting with ways of making it even more painful or efficient. So an awful lot of people put an awful lot of thought and effort into this way of torturing a person to death. To Yeshua the horror was not only in the actual crucifixion but the mind and hearts which gave birth and assent and form to it. Just as his toolbox was the concrete expression of his father's love, the cross was the concrete expression of many people's hate.

Yeshua did not share these thoughts with his parents. They didn't understand. They tried but they did not see things as he did: all connected. His whole life he was like that. He saw the roots of things, the paths along which certain actions took folks, the odd symmetry between the visible world and the world of the Spirit revealed in the Torah, the writings and the prophets. He had a knack of seeing these things as clearly as he could see the grain in the wood he worked.

These thoughts ran through Yeshua's mind as he dressed the stone. He liked how he could concentrate on this physical task, the angle and force needed to shape the stone, and yet, as he fell into a routine, let his mind examine the facets of a moral or spiritual problem and work out how best to attack it. Each endeavor provided relief from the rigors or boredom of the other as well as hitherto unperceived insights into each other. At the end of the day, he had either built a wall or an argument for looking at the things of God in a different way.

One person who was more pleased with the walls he built rather than the arguments he constructed was Eliakim. At first, the old rabbi back in Nazareth was delighted to have such an intelligent and inquisitive boy. He loved teaching Yeshua his letters and how to read Torah. He loved to recount how the rabbis debated and brought out the meaning of the written law and by this manner discovered the oral law, applying the law of Moses to everyday matters not directly mentioned in Torah. As Yeshua got older and more articulate and more observant, Eliakim loved to debate his student as he had his teachers in Jerusalem. Until Yeshua started making arguments Eliakim couldn't counter, arguments which took notice of certain—well, he wouldn't call them contradictions in the law; let's say, paradoxes. It was disconcerting when Yeshua spotted a connection between two seemingly unrelated matters and came up with a novel insight that turned the traditional interpretation on its head. Even when Eliakim managed a good defense against Yeshua's arguments, afterwards the whole doctrine felt unreal to him for days.

Yeshua loved his discussions with his rabbi. It wasn't that he was trying to win the arguments; he was trying to understand the laws which ran their lives. There must be good reasons that God laid them down, although Yeshua was starting to doubt that the oral law was equal to the words of the Torah. He recalled the words of the one hundred third psalm: “The LORD carries out righteous acts and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the sons of Israel. Merciful and gracious is the LORD; slow to anger and rich in kindness. He will not always strive with us, nor will he stay angry forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our guilt.” But you would never know that from the multitude of nitpicking rules God's people had to follow.

And Yeshua was beginning to suspect that not all of them had a strictly divine origin. He had seen them used in unjust and merciless ways. Like the way his neighbor Mordecai had treated his wife, Rebekah. He had fallen for that younger woman. So he found some trivial fault with his wife, said “I divorce you,” three times, and gave her a bill of divorcement. Then he married the new woman, leaving poor old Rebekah penniless. How was the woman to live? That wasn't just. That wasn't merciful. Yet because some rabbis said the law allowed it and pointed to some part of the law, it was considered in alignment with God's will. But that wasn't the God Yeshua knew, the God whom Isaiah called “our father.” The Psalm said that as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord had compassion on his faithful followers. Well, then, what kind of father makes so heartless a rule as that? Not Yeshua's father.

Maybe Yeshua was a bit sore on the topic because of the stories he heard about his own parents. Stories the neighbors whispered behind his back, thinking that he couldn't hear them. Stories said to his face by children in Nazareth when they wanted to hurt the smart kid who showed them up in the classes they had with the rabbi. Disturbing stories: that his mother had been pregnant with him before the end of the betrothal period between her and Yosef. That Yosef was set to divorce her quietly because he wasn't the father. And what would have happened to Miriam had she been abandoned and pregnant? Would her parents dare take her in and share her shame before the village? Or would his mother have been dragged out to the town square and stoned as the law of Moses said? Yeshua didn't like to think about that. But then something changed Yosef's mind. He went ahead with the wedding, despite the fact that his neighbors no longer considered him a righteous man. But small town gossip has a long life.

Yosef and Miriam never told Yeshua those stories. Yeah, they told him how they had to go to Yosef's home town, Bethlehem, because he had inherited some family property there and had to pay taxes on it. They told him how it was at this time that Yeshua chose to be born and how the influx of relatives had filled the guest room at his brother's house and so his mother had to give birth to him in the middle of the family room. And how they had to lay Yeshua in the feeding trough that divided the upper level of the house from the lower level where they kept the animals at night. And how their donkey just kept staring at this baby in his eating place as if he was not at all happy about the situation. And they would laugh about that. Sometimes, his mother would tell him about the shepherds who came to visit. And the star, so bright, like a lighthouse in the heavens shining over their heads. She would talk of the strange foreign men who came one night much later bringing presents. And she would talk about how handy the gifts were in providing the means for them to move to Egypt. But they never really talked about why they moved there. His mother said they had to go so his father could make a living. But once he thought she said it was so they could go on living. Then she corrected herself. At least that was how Yeshua remembered it.

Yeshua did vaguely remember Egypt. He was very small then. But he remembers the Jewish community they lived in while there. It was the same as Nazareth in many ways and yet somehow different. And then they moved again. They returned to Nazareth. That move Yeshua remembered clearly. He remembered being the new boy with the strange accent. He remembered working hard to lose that accent. But he could do nothing to eliminate the strange rumors surrounding his conception.

He tried asking his parents but they didn't really want to talk about them. And he stopped asking about them. Maybe one day he would ask his parents about those stories. But not yet. Maybe when the time seemed right.

And like that, he was done with the stone. And he was hungry. Where was Yosef? He had to see and approve Yeshua's work. And Yosef had the bag with the lunch mother had packed them. Yeshua thought of the bread she baked, and the cheese she had made from their goat's milk, and the figs she had traded a nearby farmer for and his stomach told him it couldn't wait. So he set off to look for his father.

That's when he heard the commotion. Men were shouting and screaming. He turned the corner of the house they were working on and saw a group of men working agitatedly to shift something. A stone. A big one. Yeshua's stomach dropped. He sensed something was wrong. He looked for Yosef. He wasn't one of the men trying to get their hands under the edge of the stone. He wasn't one of the men trying to reattach the ropes and lift the stone. Yeshua pushed through the knot of frantic men surrounding the stone. And then he saw it. Yosef's hand.

He knew that hand well. He knew every scar and tendon and vein. He had watched that hand as it showed him over and over how to chip wood and smooth stone and assemble tables. He had watched that hand as it was raised in prayer in the synagogue. He had seen that hand as it held each of his brothers and sisters when they were babies. He had felt that hand when it laid itself on his shoulders and made him get up from his studies and go to bed.

Yeshua's eyes went from that hand, up the sinewy arm that had embraced him, and up to the stone. And Yeshua couldn't put it together. There was Yosef's arm and there was the stone; where was the rest of his father? A niggling thought started to bloom in the back of his mind but his heart quashed it. Part of him knew the truth; part of him didn't want to know.

And as his heart caught up with his mind, Yeshua suddenly found it hard to breathe. He was surrounded by air, and yet it seemed like he could not take it in. He began to pant. He started to get lightheaded and one of the men saw him and forced him to his knees and forced his head between his knees. Yeshua kneeled, head bent to the ground, gasping for air. And suddenly men were all around him, telling him to breathe, saying prayers for Yosef, crying. One man kept saying, “I'm sorry! I'm sorry!” And he got down on his knees and thrust his face at Yeshua's and kept saying, “I'm sorry! I'm sorry!”

“Did...you...?” Yeshua squeezed out between pants.

“No. No. No, I didn't drop the stone on him. I didn't even see it. I was joking with Boaz when Yosef yelled, 'Look out!' and shoved me out of the way. If I had seen it I would have moved and he wouldn't have pushed me out of the way and the stone wouldn't have...” And seeing the growing horror on Yeshua's face the man's words died on his lips and he burst into tears.

Yeshua stared at the man. Who was he? Yeshua didn't remember seeing him before? Was he new? Did Yosef even know him? Did his father die to save some random guy who wasn't even paying attention?

Yeshua turned to what was left of his father. He scooted on his knees, scraping them raw, not caring. He crawled to that hand. He clasped it with his own. It was warm. Yeshua wept.

It took a while for the men to hook up the rig to the stone again and move it off of Yosef's body. They tried to shield Yeshua's eyes from the sight but he pushed them away and looked. It was horrible. And yet the ruined body filled Yeshua with a conviction: this was not Yosef. The man he knew and loved was not there anymore. His humor, his practical mind, his delight in children, both his own and others, were not here anymore. This was like the discarded clothing of the man who raised him, taught him, admonished him, marveled at him and showed pride in him. The essence of Yosef was gone.

The men improvised a stretcher, a sturdy one, as you would expect builders to do. Some were reluctant to touch the body. One pleaded that it would make them ritually unclean. An older man showed disgust for them and knelt to shift the body. The man Yosef saved knelt as well and then a few others. Carefully, almost delicately, they picked up the body of Yosef and put him on the stretcher. The man who'd been saved stripped off his outer tunic and covered as much of the body as he could. Then, Yeshua leading the way, they carried it to Nazareth.

Yeshua was no longer crying. He felt empty. He felt almost as hollow as Yosef's body was. That day he had seen the death of a rooster and the death of his father. In both cases what was left both was and was not the being who had a moment before been alive. Are a dead chicken and a dead man ultimately the same? One is food for a family, the other for flies.

He could not accept that. There must be a difference. There must be a meaning. But was there? What gives a death meaning?

The silent procession left the city, under the shadows of the old crosses. 

Smash Hit

Since I have retired and am on a trip, I don't have a sermon to post for the next few weeks. But here is the first chapter of one of the books I've been writing. Hope you like it.

I was sick as a dog, as my grandmother would say. The previous week I was so sick I couldn't enjoy the time my wife Julie and I had with my last patient while in Orlando. We called Nicholas, the tow-headed little boy I had taken care of as a home health nurse for the first couple of years of his life, our “practice grandchild.” He is and always has been a sweet and happy child despite the challenges he's had to face. He bonded with us and we with him. Until our granddaughter Zoe was born, we spoiled Nicholas. Now we spoil both.

He and his adoptive mother had moved away from the Florida Keys where we live. So after Christmas we went upstate to spend time with him. As it was, he spent most of the time with Julie while I lay in bed, sneezing and coughing. None of my drainage was purulent so I thought it was just a bad allergy attack. When I got back home the buckets of stuff I was bringing up got colorful, a sign of infection. I went to the doctor and got a diagnosis and a prescription. I even skipped going to the jail where I was the chaplain that Friday night, because I felt like crap, I didn't want to introduce the germ into that closed environment and I wanted to get to bed early. It was all for naught. I was up all night, sneezing and coughing up enough phlegm to float the QE 2. When the alarm went off at 5 am, January 9, 2016, I felt as if I hadn't slept at all. I should have canceled my plans.

But my bishop, the Right Reverend Leo Frade, the man who ordained me, was retiring. He was the senior bishop in the Episcopal church, having served as bishop of Honduras for 17 years before serving as bishop of southeast Florida for 15 years. That Saturday we were celebrating his ministry with a huge worship service. As Dean of the Florida Keys, the elected representative of our Deanery, I was supposed to be there. And personally I wanted to say goodbye. I like Leo. So I got up, took my meds, got cleaned up, got dressed, and went over to St. Francis in the Keys Episcopal Church, one of the 2 churches I pastor (the other being Lord of the Seas Lutheran Church), to get my vestments. I drank my energy drink and tuned my radio to NPR and drove the 135 miles to Miami. No problem.

The Eucharist was beautiful. The cathedral choir outdid itself. The Gospel was read, as usual, in Spanish, Creole and English, befitting our multilingual, multicultural diocese. The preacher was a friend of Leo's who had many insightful, funny and embarrassing stories about him to share. At the passing of the peace I had to fist bump and elbow bump others rather than shake hands or hug or kiss them to prevent spreading my contagion. I attended the reception afterward, chatted with the bishop and his wife, and then left. I hung my vestments in the back seat of my car and took off for home, sipping another energy drink and listening to mentally stimulating NPR podcasts.

As I passed through the city of Marathon, in the Middle Keys, I realized that I could stop at the Keys Celtic Festival that our sister church St. Columba was holding. My wife was there, manning the St. Francis booth. But I missed the left turn to the parking and decided to power through the 20 miles to home. I just wanted to get to my bed.

I don't remember the accident. According to the official report, coming off the bridge to Big Pine Key I crossed over into the oncoming lane and hit head-on a mini-van of German tourists. They were all treated and released the same day, thank God! I, however, in the space of seconds, managed to break both legs, both wrists, 6 ribs, and my sternum. I also bruised my pericardium (the sack enclosing the heart), shredded my diaphragm, skewered my pancreas, tore my sigmoid colon and bruised a lung. The front end of my Nissan Altima was accordioned up to the dashboard, leaving barely a foot of space for my damaged legs. I was going 45 miles an hour, the legal speed limit. I was also a mere 2 miles from home.

I do remember awakening to loud voices. The EMTs and sheriff's deputies were asking me my name and if I knew the month, year and president. I was just taking in the cracked windshield and deployed airbag and figuring out that I must have been in an accident, when the nursing part of my brain realized they were establishing my orientation to person and time. My legs, compressed by the engine against the firewall, felt as if they were dangling by strings. Later someone would send my wife a picture of the officers and paramedics working on me in the car. A deputy is holding my neck from behind with his blue-gloved hands. I actually remember that moment because, again the nursing part of my brain realized that he was doing this preparatory to putting a cervical collar on me. I also remember them cutting me out of the car, which is about the time the pain kicked in. They pulled me out, which was excruciating, and put me on a back board and carried me to an ambulance. Pain shot through me with every step and jolt. I kept saying, “Oh, God! Oh, God!” The ambulance took me to a space on a nearby bridge where a medical helicopter had landed. The Keys has 3 hospitals but none can handle major trauma. I remember being loaded into the copter but I don't remember the flight because at that moment my right lung collapsed and I passed out. They had to deal with my pneumothorax and worked for 2 ½ hours to stabilize me before they could take off and fly me to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.

My wife, ironically enough, works for 911. Captain Hiller of the Sheriff's Department called her boss, Laura White, at home, because he vaguely remembered that my wife worked for her. Laura got from her home in Marathon to the Festival in about 3 minutes. She told Julie what Hiller had told her: that I had been in a car accident and was being flown to the trauma center. My son James and his family were at the Festival as well and they drove Julie up to the mainland.

I have one other memory of that day. I was by now sedated and intubated so I couldn't open my eyes or speak. I was in the ER, apparently, and I heard Julie speaking. My wife is quite the baker and she knew all the EMTs and first responders at my accident. I heard her say she would have to make a lot of cookies to thank them. Then I heard a distinctive, soft British voice say, “You don't happen to have any in the car, do you?” It was our new bishop, the Rt. Rev. Peter Eaton, trying to keep the mood light. I was his first pastoral visit on his first day on the job.

I remember nothing more. My wife says I went into surgery about 9 pm. I came out about 3 in the morning. It was the first of 6 surgeries. Altogether I had a rod inserted into my left thigh and external fixators on my shattered lower right leg; my stomach was pushed back through my diaphragm, my colon was repaired and a drain was put in my pancreas. I had 2 chest tubes. I was put in a medical coma for 5 days. (Julie swears it was longer but I've seen the Facebook posts she and I put up less than a week after my accident.) She was in the ICU with me for as many hours a day as they would permit. Our daughter Beth flew down from St. Louis. Our son James, his wife and our granddaughter Zoe came up from the Keys every weekend.

Droves of people were praying for me: my family in St. Louis, my two churches, people at the jail, both staff and inmates, my colleagues in both denominations and others who either knew me or knew of me. The best way to understand the Keys is as if it were one small town stretched out for more than 100 miles along highway US-1. People live on one island but often work or shop on others. There are way less degrees of separation between 2 Keys residents than between any movie star and Kevin Bacon. So lots of people knew of my accident and were at least sending positive thoughts. I was oblivious.

At any of these points—the crash itself, the collapse of my lung in the helicopter, or the long hours of surgery—I could have died. My story would have ended. Or I could have simply not awakened from my coma. I have seen that happen in too many patients when I worked on neurosurgery. And often I knew little or nothing about those unconscious people whose lives and health were in my hands back back then. So what brought me to this point? How did I, a nurse for 35 years and a pastor for 15, end up like this, pieced and stitched together and lying unconscious like Frankenstein's creature, waiting to be brought back to the land of the living?

Lord of Life

The scriptures referred to are Matthew 28:1-10.

I love to read biographies but I don't enjoy the final chapters. Because you have to read about the person's decline and death. If it's the biography of a person you admire, their death might feel not as dignified as you think they deserve. C.S. Lewis was found on the floor of his bedroom having died from end-stage kidney failure exactly a week before his 65^th birthday. And because President Kennedy was assassinated that same day, Lewis' death was not widely reported at first. Mystery writer, lay theologian and Dante translator Dorothy L. Sayers died of a heart attack and was found dead at the foot of the stairs to her home. The death of Edgar Allen Poe, father of the mystery story, is itself a mystery. He was found semi-conscious, incoherent and wearing clothes that were not his own. His medical records and death certificate were lost. We don't know what killed him. Okay, that last death is intriguing. Not dignified but intriguing.

Dignified or not, everyone dies. And while in my experience as a nurse, most deaths are peaceful, they are still sad. You would think that, knowing it is the natural end of every life, human beings would have come to accept it. But our minds rebel against it. The earliest epic poem, featuring the earliest epic hero, Gilgamesh, is about his quest to attain immortality. In the end he discovers that death is inevitable.

The satirical website The Onion once ran the following headline: “Existentialist Firefighter Delays 3 Deaths.” Because, of course, people pulled out of the fire, though they may live for decades more, will eventually die of something else. It's a reminder that we really have no power to stop death. It's beyond our control.

We fear things we can't control: hurricanes, earthquakes, nuclear war, diseases, all of which can lead to that thing that is most outside our control and our greatest fear, death. Of course we can do things that mitigate these threats, like enact building codes that can withstand certain natural disasters better, and negotiate treaties, and develop vaccines and treatments for diseases. But as the Onion headline implies, we can't prevent death, just postpone it.

There are scientists who are researching longevity but they usually are trying to help us live healthier longer, not live forever. Fashion mogul Peter Nygard tried all kinds of medical interventions and actually talked to a longevity scientist. He said that he had millions of dollars so why couldn't he buy immortality? The scientist told him it was impossible. As the Shel Silverstein song says, “You can get rid of stress, get a lot of rest, get an AIDS test, enroll in EST, move out west where it's sunny and dry and you'll live to be a hundred but you're still gonna die.”

The Serenity Prayer goes, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” And death looks like the ultimate thing we can't change. So that would mean that we must accept death peacefully. There is nothing we can do to change its inevitability.

And the early part of the Old Testament would seem to agree. The fate of the dead is Sheol, a shadowy afterlife for everyone, which, if not exactly non-existence, is at least described as sleeping with one's ancestors. (1 Kings 2:10)

And yet the Hebrew Bible gives us glimpses of a different fate. Job says, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I will see for myself, and whom my own eyes will behold, and not another.” (Job 19:25-27) That sounds like the resurrection of the body. And indeed the book of Daniel says, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Daniel 12:2) So the sleep of death is not permanent. Isaiah says, “Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.” (Isaiah 26:19) And again Isaiah says of God, “On this mountain he will swallow up the shroud that is over all the peoples, the veil that is over all the nations; he will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face, and remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 25:7-8) By Jesus' time, most Jews believed in the resurrection of the dead, though not all. (Mark 12:18)

But talk is cheap, some might say. Where is the evidence? The New Testament doesn't just talk about resurrection, it points to its evidence: Jesus. Each of the gospels recounts Jesus raising one or more people from the dead. (Matthew 9:18-19, 23-25; Mark 5:22-24, 38-42; Luke 7:11-15, 8:41-42, 49-56; John 11:1-44) And of course they all end with Jesus being raised from the dead. The only other explanation is that the disciples stole his body, although how they could do that from a tomb guarded by professional soldiers and why they would then die for a lie rather than confess are extremely problematic.

Now the gospels were written around or after the time the apostles were being martyred. With the living witnesses being executed, Mark and the others decided to preserve their stories about Jesus. But his resurrection didn't first appear in the gospels, but in the letters of Paul, long before the gospels were written. And he mentions Jesus' resurrection in just about every one. In the earliest of them, 1 Thessalonians, he writes, “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Thessalonians 4:14) That was written around 51 AD, just 20 years after Jesus' death and resurrection. And lest you think that's enough time for such a story to become widely accepted, that would be like someone in the 1980s claiming that President Kennedy rose from the dead. Too many people would still be around to dispute that assertion. After all, it took hundreds of years for legends to develop around a warrior named Arthur and elevate him merely to the status of king of all Britain. Yet we have documentary evidence that 20 years after he lived, people who knew Jesus worshiped him as the incarnate, crucified and risen Lord.

And in 1 Corinthians, written about 55 AD, we are given the first account of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances. After mentioning his appearance to the twelve, Paul says, “Then he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:6) Paul is saying, “If you don't believe me, ask them.” Pretty gutsy if it was a lie. As Charles Colson, Special Counsel under President Nixon, said, “I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured it if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world—and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks.”

We know about such conspiracies because eventually someone talks. That's how we know the truth about crop circles and seances and the famous photos of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster. The people involved talked. They always do. Yet not one person ever confessed that Jesus' resurrection was a hoax. Every witness when faced with the choice of life for recanting the resurrection or death for affirming it chose death. Because death no longer scared them. They knew someone stronger than death.

That's what changed the world. That's what changes lives: the good news that God loves us enough to enter the world in the form of his son, take upon himself our sins, die for us and rise again to offer his eternal life to all who trust and follow him. God has transformed the dead end of this life into a door to a new life, life in him, life as it should be and as he always intended it to be.

Jesus said, “What is impossible for mere humans is possible for God.” (Luke 18:27) He was talking about salvation but it holds true for every obstacle in life. God can overcome anything. He took his son who was whipped, beaten, skewered by nails, and hung from a cross to bleed out until he died and raised him to life again. Then he took the movement of a handful of Jesus' followers in one corner of an ancient empire and turned them into a movement that today encircles the globe. And he can take a couple of small and shrinking churches and infuse them with new life and with growth. Death is not as inevitable as we thought. Not to the Lord of Life.

It turns out that death is not the primary thing beyond our control after all. God is. God alone can control death. He alone can reverse it. He did it before. And he will do it again. He told us so because he loves us. So putting out trust in the God of love and light and life, let us cast off all fear of lesser things, let us go bravely forth into the world and let us proclaim, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Last?

It's weird that we call it the Last Supper. It wasn't...not even for Jesus. He does eat again, once when he first appears to the remnant of his disciples and eats a broiled fish to assure them he is not a ghost (Luke 24:33-43) and later when he makes them breakfast at the Sea of Galilee (John 21:9-14).

Maybe we call it the Last Supper because it was the last normal meal he had with friends. And yet it wasn't that normal either. It was the Passover, a feast with a religious meaning: God's liberation of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. While it may not have had all the features of the modern day Passover, it did have the lamb, the bitter herbs, the unleavened bread, the wine and the questions that were to be asked and answered. (Exodus 12:24-27)

And Jesus added another set of meanings onto the meal. He took the unleavened bread, which symbolized the haste with which the Israelites had to leave Egypt, and said, “This is my body, which is for you.” He takes the cup of wine, which represents the redemption of the Israelite slaves, and says, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” And after each he tells his disciples to do it in remembrance of him, in the same way the Passover commemorates the Exodus. (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)

But before all this Jesus strips down and washes his disciples feet as the lowest slave would, to teach them humility and that they, like he, are to serve one another. After the meal, Jesus launches into a long teaching session, where he prepares them for his death, assures them that he will not leave them as orphans but send the Spirit to live with and in them, encourages them to stay connected to him as branches do to a vine, promises they will see him again and gives them a new commandment to love one another as he loves them. (John 13-16) So it's not exactly a normal Passover meal either.

What we can say is that it is the last meal before everything changes. For the disciples, in a matter of hours one of their friends will betray Jesus and hand him over to the authorities. They will flee and he will be interrogated, tortured, and handed over by the religious leaders to the Romans. All this will take place while the average Jew is at the temple, oblivious to what is happening next door at the Antonia fortress. Then he will be stripped of his clothes and crucified. He will die and be buried by sunset, just 24 hours after they started the meal. To the disciples it would have felt very much like the last supper they would ever have with Jesus.

For Jesus, everything would change as well. Jesus would be stripped of more than just his clothes. He would be stripped of his position, his friends, his control over his own body. He would lose everything. He would lose his sense of God's presence and his life.

So this Passover meal was the last one he would partake of before all was taken from him.

But in the long view, which was Jesus' way of looking at things, it was not the last supper ever. Jesus says to the disciples, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” And of the cup he says, “For I tell you that from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” (Luke 22:15-16, 18) So it is not the last supper for Jesus but it marks a moratorium on his part until he can enjoy it again with his followers in the kingdom of God.

By the way, the kingdom does not mean heaven. Matthew, writing to a Jewish audience, avoids using God's name, instead using the euphemism “kingdom of heaven.” In all the other gospels it is called the kingdom of God. And the word for kingdom isn't restricted to a piece of land but means a king's reign or realm as well. It is whenever and wherever God reigns. Therefore the kingdom came in Jesus (Luke 11:20); it is present now both within and among his followers (Mark 12:34; Luke 17:21); and it ultimately will see its fulfillment when Jesus returns. (Luke 21:25-27, 31) It's kinda like the end of World War 2. The beginning of the end was D-Day, June 6, 1944, when the Allied troops landed on the coast of France. As they pushed across Europe they liberated people from the rule of the Third Reich. But the war in Europe wasn't over till V-E Day, May 8^th, 1945. Similarly God invaded history in Christ. Jesus was the embodiment of God's reign. He spread it to his followers and through them to the rest of the world. But the fulfillment of God's reign over the world he created will only be culminated with Jesus' return.

So right now as we partake of the Lord's Supper, we remember his death, we proclaim his resurrection and we await his coming in glory. And on that day we will eat and drink with him.

One of Jesus' favorite pictures of God's kingdom was that of a wedding banquet. This was a community-wide celebration, a big occasion for little towns like Nazareth. It would last a week or two, which is why they ran out of wine at the wedding at Cana. So the kingdom of God is not one of drudgery or grimness. It is joy and celebration. It is the union of Jesus the bridegroom and his people. So what he is inviting us to is a party celebrating the triumph of God's love for us.

But first we have to share this meal in remembrance of Jesus. We have to endure him being stripped of his dignity and his agency and his life, as we will strip the altar. We will undergo a day of death and a still and silent Saturday. But we cling to his promise that he will come again and he will eat and drink with us again when his kingdom comes in its fullness. And in that hope and anticipation we live for him.

Cross Purposes

The scriptures referred to are Philippians 2:5-11 and Matthew 26:14-27:66.

I remember being taken by my mother to see the film The Greatest Story Ever Told when it came to the theaters in 1965. I was 10. At 3 hours and 45 minutes it was the longest film I'd ever seen at that point. I still remember several scenes vividly but I especially remember being upset at Jesus' death. Heroes rarely died in films back then and Jesus' death seemed so unjust. What I didn't understand then was that was the point.

When you're a kid, you are taught by children's movies and TV shows and books that good always wins out over evil. Virtue is rewarded in this life. Yes, the hero may have to face challenges but he will overcome them and defeat the bad guy and win the girl. The romance angle didn't really interest me when I was a kid; I was more interested in the triumph of good over evil. Whether the hero used his brains like Sherlock Holmes or his strength like Superman, the moment when the bad guy got what he deserved was the payoff I had been waiting for.

Of course, in real life I became aware quite early that good does not always win. Bullies often got away with terrorizing and humiliating smaller kids. And as I grew up I realized that even worse injustices take place. The Nazis were bad guys in comics, movies and TV but I never realized just how evil they were in real life until I saw the 1978 miniseries entitled Holocaust. And the more you study history and listen to the news, the more you realize the true scope of man's inhumanity to his fellow man. Although it does make you think that being “inhuman” to others is all too human.

Last week we looked at the very human reasons Jesus' opponents had for wanting to get rid of him. Today I want to look at his death as God's response to injustice.

Jesus' name in Hebrew means “Yahweh saves.” Joseph is told to name him that “because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21) Jesus said “For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) He further said, “I have not come to judge the world but to save the world.” (John 12:47) Paul says, “This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.'” (1 Timothy 1:15) Jesus' whole life was a rescue mission.

But the New Testament doesn't say exactly how he saves us except that it involves his crucifixion. There are clues though. At the supper on the night he was betrayed, Jesus takes the cup and says, “Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, that is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:27-28) Covenants were sealed with a sacrifice. Both Paul and Hebrews speak of Jesus offering himself as a sacrifice to God, specifically for sins. (Ephesians 5:2; Hebrews 9:26)

Making sacrifices to a god is as old as religion and just as universal. People have been making animal sacrifices since the Middle Neolithic period between 4800 and 4000 BC. We find it in Egypt, Spain, Mesopotamia, Persia, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, China, and Japan. It was part of the Old Norse religion, Celtic religion, traditional African religions, Hinduism, Islam, and, of course, Judaism. It's still part of Santeria. The general idea is to appease the gods and bring good fortune to the people.

Human sacrifice was also practiced worldwide, notably here in the Americas, with the exception of Judaism where it was forbidden. Nevertheless the judge Jephthah and two kings of Judah practiced it. (Judges 11; 2 Kings 16:3; 2 Chronicles 33:6) Yet the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac, and then God stopping him and providing a ram instead, shows that God will not ask that of us. (Genesis 22) In Exodus, because they were spared from the tenth plague, all the firstborn of Israel are the Lord's. Firstborn animals were therefore sacrificed but firstborn children are redeemed by animal sacrifice. (Exodus 13:12-15; Luke 2:22-24)

So Jesus' death is a sacrifice and by it he redeems us. Jesus said, “...the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:27-28) The Greek word translated “ransom” refers to the price paid to free a slave. It is related to the verb we translate “redeem,” again used of buying someone out of slavery. Jesus said, "Everyone who practices sin is a slave of sin." (John 8:34) Which is why we call Jesus our redeemer as in the Old Testament God is called the Redeemer of Israel for freeing his people from slavery. 

There is another meaning of the word sacrifice: to make sacred or holy. You give something up to God to be used for sacred purposes. During the exodus, the Israelites made an offering of their treasures and their skills to be used in the building of the tabernacle. (Exodus 35:20-29) Thus what was ordinary was dedicated or set aside for God's purposes and transformed into something holy. But since Jesus already dedicated his whole life to God's purpose, he isn't made more holy. Instead by his death, he offers us eternal life. But only God is eternal, without beginning or end. So the life Jesus is giving us is his life. He is making us holy like him, dedicated to God's purposes.

Sacrifice is not a word that sits easy with us today. We don't like giving things up. It's not fair that we give up what is ours for someone else. And yet sometimes it becomes necessary. People give up jobs to take care of parents or spouses when they are extremely ill. Parents make sacrifices for their children's welfare. Firefighters and police risk and sometimes give up their lives to save or protect others. Sacrifice is a part of life. It is often a part of making a choice. Taking a job may mean giving up living in your hometown and moving to another state. Marrying one person means giving up sleeping with other people. Having kids often means giving up sleeping, or at least giving up sleeping all night for a while. But we weigh the cost and the benefits and make our choice. If we choose unwisely, we learn that our choices can have dire consequences.

We see that in the world we have made for ourselves. The world has become something other than the paradise God intended it to be. We inflict pain and suffering and death on others. That's not just. And all ancient peoples realized that atonement must be made. And they realized the cost of doing so involved sacrifice, giving up something costly, like a life. This seems to have arisen in humans spontaneously. In Genesis 4, Cain and Abel make the first sacrifices without God asking for them. But in Isaiah, we learn that God does not need or want sacrifices, especially if they are empty of a real change of heart. (Isaiah 1:11-19) As it says in Psalm 51, “For you don't delight in sacrifice or else I would give it. You have no pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:16-17)

And perhaps that is another part of what Jesus was doing on our behalf: not only taking on the consequences for our sins but showing the willing penitence we can't. Sometimes we focus too much on Jesus' physical sufferings. Spiritually he gave up his privileges as God. He humbled himself, as our passage from Philippians says. And he gave up his sense of God's presence. When he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” his spirit and his heart were broken. And when he said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” he was offering that broken spirit to God. (Luke 23:46)

The innocent suffering because of the guilty is unfair. Usually it is unwilling on the part of the innocent. They don't seek it out. And usually no good comes out of it. But God has taken this fundamental injustice we inflict on each other and flipped the script. As it says in 1 Peter, “...Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring you to God...” (1 Peter 3:18) Jesus willingly took on the injustice we dish out to the innocent and turned it into another kind of injustice: giving the guilty what they don't deserve—grace. To break the cycle of injustice and suffering someone has to make the first move. The one who does that is the bigger person. And in this case that person is God in Christ.

I don't think we will ever know exactly how Christ's sacrifice worked. But we know why. In sacrifice something precious is given up to obtain something considered more valuable. Which means that reconciling us to God was more precious in Jesus' eyes than the cost of his dying on the cross. The cross shows us how great his love for us is.

So every year we remember Jesus' death. And it should keep us humble and make us penitent. It reminds us of how horrible we humans can be. The cross was intended both as the most horrific way of killing people and as a warning to others of what happens if you cross those in power. And first someone had to come up with the idea of the cross. And then someone had to work out how to make it. And then someone had to build one. Then someone had to actually put a person on it and make sure it killed them. And then people had to copy it and improve on its design and spread it all over their empire. And then people in the empire next door adopted it. That's a long chain of evil, from the idea to its expression to its execution. And it's all on us. Humans made Jesus' cross. Humans nailed him to it. They did it to advertise their power and their ruthlessness. The cross reminds us of the evil we have done. It also reminds us of how God chose to respond: by transforming something so evil into a means of unbelievable goodness and grace.

And that's why the cross became the symbol of the gospel. The good news is that God took our killing of his son and transformed it into our freedom from our slavery to sin. And he transformed the instrument of Jesus' death, which was conceived out of hatred, into the channel of eternal life offered out of his great love.

Paul said, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God....we preach about a crucified Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:18, 23-25) Someone came up with the cross to show their power. But then Christ became one of us and let those in power nail him to the cross to show everyone what real power is—the power of the God who is love.