Paralysed by Fear, Liberated by Love: Reflections on Mark 16.1-8 (RCL Easter B, 1 April 2018)

Paralysed by Fear, Liberated by Love

Reflections on Mark 16.1-8

RCL Easter B

1 April 2018

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 Eucharist on the 1st.

Mark 16.1-8

            ^16.1 When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.  ² And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.  ³ They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?”  ⁴ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.  ⁵ As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.  ⁶ But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has been raised; he is not here.  Look, there is the place they laid him.  ⁷ But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”  ⁸ So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

(1)  Have you ever been paralysed by fear?  I have.

(a)  I find it quite easy to write a difficult e-mail or a letter when the situation presents itself.

(b)  I can even give a public talk on a controversial topic to a large group of people and handle all the difficult questions that may come my way at the end.

(c)  But I become almost frozen into inaction if I have to talk to an individual, whether on the telephone or in person, about matters of a more personal and possibly confrontational nature.

(i)  I’m sure that my discomfort comes from the personal immediacy of the encounter.

(ii)  Will the person become confrontational?  Will they become emotional?  Will I fail to speak the truth in love?  Will I open a can of worms that will expose my own inadequacies and my own failures in the relationship?

(2)  But I also know the consequences of allowing my fears to control me.

(a)  In some cases a delay may cause more harm to a relationship than intervening sooner.

(b)  In other cases my delay can cause a situation to move from being ‘fixable’ to becoming so ‘toxic’ that there is little chance for any positive or constructive outcome.

(c)  And in all cases I become more controlled by my fears and I can slip into an unhelpful passive attitude or even a kind of despair.

(3)  Knowing the real and concrete power of fear in my life, I can understand how Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome felt on that Sunday morning so long ago.

(a)  During the past week they have experienced the excitement of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and his dramatic confrontations with the religious authorities.

(b)  They have borne the sorrow of Jesus’ arrest, trial, torture and execution at the hands of the religious and civil authorities as well as their own terror of being ‘found out’ and arrested themselves.

(c)  But they overcome their fears and come to the tomb to offer Jesus’ body all the loving dignity that their rabbi, their master, deserves.

(d)  But is it any wonder that they cannot do what the young man dressed in white asks them to do?

(i)  Who is going to believe three women that the tomb is empty?  Women, after all, were considered ‘incompetent’ witnesses who could not be called to give evidence in a religious or civil court.

(ii)  Who is going to believe that a Jewish rabbi from small-town Judea, publicly executed by the Romans, entombed behind a massive stone door on a Friday afternoon, has been raised from the dead?

(iii)  And most importantly, who wants to be the messenger who tells the world that the old order is about to be shaken to its very foundations?

(1)  The religious authorities wanted Jesus dead because they considered him a blasphemer who threatened the religious establishment.  How are they going to take the news that the heretic has been raised from dead?

(2)  The civil authorities wanted Jesus dead because they considered him a rabble-rouser who threatened social order and Roman imperial power.  How are they going to take the news that the Judean troublemaker has been raised from the dead?

(e)  So it’s not so hard to understand the women’s silence.  After all, who was that mysterious young man anyway and why should anyone do what he says?  Better to keep silent.

(4)  But you and I know that someone did talk, otherwise we would not be here today.

(a)  I believe that the fear experienced by the followers of Jesus in those days and weeks after that Sunday morning was eventually overcome

(i)  by the love of God, physically present to them in Jesus

(ii)  and the courage of faith, poured into their hearts, souls, minds and strength by the Holy Spirit.

(b)  They came to know

(i)  that goodness is stronger than evil;

(ii)  that love is stronger than hate;

(iii)  that light is stronger than darkness;

(iv)  that life is stronger than death.

(c)  And they knew this, just as we know this, because of ‘ . . . what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands’ (1 John 1.1b).

(5)  My friends, I sometimes think that many of us, myself included, are like the two Marys and Salome on that early Sunday morning.

(a)  We have heard, we have seen and we have touched the love of God and its power to transform our lives --- but we remain silent.

(b)  Perhaps we remain silent because we are afraid other people might associate us with religious intolerance and intellectual narrow-mindedness --- not unreasonable in today’s world.

(c)  Perhaps we are silent because we are afraid that some people will think we are interfering in their lives by bringing a ‘private’ matter into ‘public’ conversation --- ‘no politics, no sex, no religion, thank you, we’re Canadians.’

(d)  Perhaps we are silent because we are afraid that we are not wise enough or spiritual enough or knowledgeable enough to talk about what we believe and why we believe in it.

(e)  I’m sure that there are many other fears that keep us silent.

(f)  Yet we know all too well

(i)  that evil sometimes seems stronger than goodness;

(ii)  that hate sometimes seems stronger than love;

(iii)  that darkness sometimes seems stronger than light;

(iv)  that death sometimes seems stronger than life.

(6)  The paralysis of fear is real, but the love of God that was made known in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and that is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit can conquer even the greatest fear.

(a)  I know that this love freed the two Marys and Salome from their fear because we are here.

(b)  I know that even in our own affluent and ‘tolerant’ society there are people who need to hear the good news that the tomb is empty and that we are free to become more fully alive in justice, mercy and humility.

(c)  Do not be afraid.  Jesus has been raised from the dead and goes before us into our Galilees, wherever they are.  We have good news to proclaim and there are many who long to hear it.

Making Room for the Other: Reflections on Philippians 2.1-11 (9 April 2017)

Making Room for the Other

Reflections on Philippians 2.1-11

RCL Palm Sunday A

9 April 2017

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 a.m. Eucharist on the 9th.

                  ^2.1 If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, ² make my joy complete:  be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  ³ Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  ⁴ Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  ⁵ Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

                  ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, ⁷ but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, ⁸ he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.

                  ⁹ Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

            Growing up as I did on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, I have always liked to have room around me.  The happiest homes in which we have lived as a family always have had plenty of space around them or easy access to green space nearby.  I admit to suffering a bit from claustrophobia, so the tightly packed streets of downtown Toronto hold no attraction for me.  I do not like shopping during busy times because of the number of people crowding the space around me.

            Sometime after Owen was born, Paula and I bought a Plymouth Voyager family van.  All three children were in some car safety seat or another, so trying to fit everything into the Subaru station wagon was no longer an option.  When our first van reached its limit, we turned it in for a new Voyager.  We had become the typical urban family:  three kids, a dog and a van.

            One of the saving graces of a family van is space.  Two children could sit in the back seat and have a space between them.  One child could sit in the middle seat and have space to her or his right.  Between the driver’s seat and the front passenger’s seat was space for whatever needed to be close at hand.  On longer road trips we had room for Paula’s box of musical noise-makers which she would produce at just the right moment.  The kids would sing at the top of their lungs and play their instruments.  Energy was discharged and harmony was maintained.  Rarely did Paula and I have to suffer the dreaded words:  ‘He touched me.  Move over.  I don’t have enough room.’

            Some theologians have described creation as God’s act of making room for others.  During the season of Lent we have heard these words every Sunday:  “At your command all things came to be:  the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home; by your will they were created and have their being.”  (BAS 201).  All that is, seen and unseen, exists because God has chosen to create rather than remain supremely alone and self-sufficient.

            And why did God choose to create?  The writer of the First Letter of John gives us the answer in three simple English words:  “. . . God is love.”  (1 John 4.8b)  Love is not possible in isolation.  Love requires someone who loves and someone who is loved.  The relationship between the lover and the beloved creates what we call love.  Augustine of Hippo, the fifth-century Christian theologian, once described the Holy Trinity as ‘God the Lover, God the Beloved, God the Love’.

            When genuine love is present, the lover makes room for the beloved.  In this space the lover hopes that the beloved will become more truly herself or himself.  And the beloved is also the lover who creates space for the other to grow and to mature.  Most conflicts in loving relationship, I think, arise when we crowd the space of the one we love.  We struggle to love the other as he or she is.  We try to crowd out the person we know at present with our image of who he or she should be.  We may do this with the very best of intentions, but our efforts run the risk of failure and disappointment.

            Paul’s words in today’s reading from his letter to the church in Philippi are among the more familiar texts in the New Testament.  Paul quotes an existing early Christian hymn that describes Jesus emptying himself in order to accomplish God’s loving purposes.  We might want to say that Jesus made room within himself for humanity by putting aside the prerogatives of being God’s promised one.  Jesus lets go of his rights in order that our relationship with God can be put right.  This is the attitude that Paul believes should inform the lives of every Christian:  “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete:  be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus . . . . “  (Philippians 2.1-5)

            What Jesus has done runs counter to much of human culture.  I dare to say that xenophobia, ‘fear of the other’, is built into the cultural DNA of many human societies.  It’s understandable:  survival as a community requires a certain caution in welcoming someone who is different, someone who is not like us.  For example, the Saxon settlers who came to Britain called the Celts ‘walesc’ --- ‘foreigners’.  We know too well the stories European colonists in the Americas and Africa told about the ‘savages’.  Making room for the ‘foreigner’ and the ‘savage’ is never easy.  One Christian writer described the Gospel according to Luke as being filled with the belief that ‘the stranger is my friend’, a truly counter-cultural view in the tribal world of humanity.  Rather than exhibiting xenophobia, Christians are meant to live out an attitude of xenophilia.

            Making room for others is at the heart of evangelism.  You and I have promised on multiple occasions that we will “. . . proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ”  (BAS 159).  Proclaiming the good news of God in Christ challenges us to make room for the other.  Making room for others is never easy.  ‘They’ move the furniture.  ‘They’ put kitchen utensils in the wrong drawers.  ‘They’ don’t understand ‘our’ jokes and ‘they’ frequently speak in languages ‘we’ do not understand.  ‘They’ ask questions that ‘we’ may not wish to answer and ‘they’ invite ‘us’ to undertake initiatives ‘we’ may not have considered.  But if Saint Faith’s is to live out its promise to be a place of  ‘help, hope and home’, then making room for others will be a priority.

            We are proclaiming the good news of God in Christ through Saint Hildegard’s Sanctuary by providing a space where contemplation and the arts can touch the lives of people who, for one reason or another, have not always experienced the Christian community to be a place of ‘help, hope and home’.  We are proclaiming the good news of God in Christ through the Community Pastoral Resource Centre by providing a space where access and advocacy touch the lives of people who need a place of ‘help, hope and home’.  Next week we shall take the first steps to reach out to families with younger children.

            But making space for others takes time and commitment.  After all, it’s been billions of years since God made space for creation --- and God’s work is not yet finished.  It’s been two thousand years since Jesus made space for humanity --- and Christ’s work is not yet finished.  It’s been seventy years since the Spirit made space for Saint Faith’s in this neighbourhood --- and the Spirit’s work is not yet finished.

            So let us “(draw) the circle wide . . . let our loving know no borders, faithful to God’s call”.  For this is the mind of Christ; this is the mind that is ours.

'So Great a Cloud of Witnesses': Some Thoughts for the Third Sunday of Easter (19 April 2015)

I apologize to my readers for offering only the skeleton of a sermon for tomorrow.  Sometimes the needs of the congregation take precedence over the needs of their rector to write a more coherent text.  May the Holy Spirit animate us all tomorrow.

RCL Easter 3B

19 April 2015

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 a.m. Eucharist on Sunday the 19th of April.

You are witnesses of these things.  Luke 24.48

In order for any credible system of justice to function there are certain essentials.  Among these essentials is the necessity of reliable witnesses.

Reliable witnesses have experience that is germane to the issue being decided by the courts.

Reliable witnesses are able to give evidence clearly and consistently.

It is always helpful for there to be more than one witness in order to examine the issue from more than one perspective.

In today’s gospel Jesus appears after his resurrection to a group of his disciples.  After reminding them that all he has done is in accordance with the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms, Jesus then utters a very simple statement that lies at the centre of our vocation as evangelists:  ‘You are witnesses of these things.’  (Luke 24.48 NRSV)  The Revised English Bible translates this verse, ‘You are to be witnesses to it all.’

Whether Jesus is speaking of the present or the future, what is important to note is that being a disciple of Jesus means bearing witness to ‘these things’. 

And what are ‘these things’?

The first generation of believers shared a common experience of the new life of God made known to them in the resurrection of Jesus.  The task that Jesus now assigned them was to give voice to this experience clearly, consistently and in as many voices as possible.

They were to look at the life, ministry and teaching of Jesus through the lens of the resurrection.  All that he had said and done in the years leading up to that last week in Jerusalem took on new significance.

To aid in the clarity and consistency of their witness, the documents we know as the New Testament came into existence.  But the early Christians were also willing to preserve the testimony of a multitude of witnesses:  four gospels rather than one, letters from a variety of apostolic writers including Paul and the followers of Peter and John.

But these documents and the traditions of faith and practice which emerged over the centuries were not meant to replace the primary vehicle to carry the good news of God in Jesus of Nazareth:  the living human voices of Jesus’ disciples over the centuries and throughout the world.

Every day of our lives you and I give evidence before a jury of our peers, some of whom are mildly sympathetic, some skeptical, some indifferent, some hostile.

We can, and should, share the stories of faith found in the Scriptures as Jesus did with his first followers.

We can, and should, share the stories of our successes and our failures as Christians over the centuries have attempted to follow the way, the truth and the life made known to us in Jesus.

But more convincing than all this is the witness we give in the day-to-day conduct of our lives.

Even as these words leave my mouth, I realize how simple and obvious the meaning they convey is.

But this simple and obvious truth cannot be repeated too often.  G. K. Chesterton, the English writer and theologian, once wrote that   “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

Jesus’ words in today’s gospel remind us that we live daily in the ‘court of public opinion’.  Our failures to live up to the Christian ideal are more often than not the subject of front-page stories; our successes often relegated to less-read sections of whatever form of media we read.

So, today I invite you to join me in pondering three questions:

How have you experienced the new life of Jesus in your own life?

What do you need to bear witness to this experience with clarity and consistency?

Who is the ‘jury’ to whom you have been summoned to witness?

I hope that you will share your answers with me, but more importantly, that you share them with each other so that we can become that ‘great cloud of witnesses’ our world needs.