The Man by the Pool

Let’s engage in a little time travel this morning by going back to 1975. It was the year that…


• Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were found guilty of the Watergate cover-up and the Vietnam War ended with the fall of Saigon.

• Space Mountain opened at Disney World and Busch Gardens opened in Williamsburg.

• NBC debuted a game show called The Wheel of Fortune and a weekly entertainment program called Saturday Night Live.

• Jimmy Hoffa disappeared near Detroit and Patty Hearst was on the FBI’s most wanted list.

• Fashion trends included bell bottoms, hip huggers, and mood rings.

• Pet rocks and the Rubik’s Cube were big sellers.

• One Flew over the Coo Coo’s Nest beat out Jaws for best picture.

• Muhammad Ali defeated Joe Frazier at the ‘Thrilla at Manila’ while Carton Fisk hit a dramatic extra-inning home run in Game 6 of the World Series.

• Americans and Russians docked in space and the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank to the bottom of Lake Superior.

• Olivia Newton-John sang Have You Never been Mellow, Bruce Springsteen released Born to Run, and C.W. McCall had a hit single called Convoy.

• Gas cost 44 cents a gallon and the average price of a new car was $4,250. A movie ticket cost a dollar and U.S. debt stood at $551 billion dollars.

• I was in the ninth grade.

1975. It seems like a long time ago… and for good reason. It was 38 years ago.

I mention all of this to give us some perspective on a person we meet in today’s gospel reading. He is a man who has been ill for 38 years. We don’t know the nature of what troubles him, only that it affects his ability to walk. At some point he pinned his hopes for a cure on a local superstition. He spent his days at the side of a Jerusalem pool said to have miraculous healing power. From time to time its water would stir – legend had it that an angel caused this to happen – and the first person to enter the water after the stirring would be healed. You can imagine that quite a few sick people believed that the only way to get better was to get in that water first.

I remember talking about this story as a teenager in Sunday school. One of my friends remarked that if he had lived in Jerusalem at the time he would have hidden behind a pillar, chucked a rock into the pool, and reveled in the mayhem he created as invalids fought it out to get in the water. Cruel as his practical joke would have been, it provides some insight as to the role these pool-side people played in the greater society. They were looked on as being helpless and hopeless, pitied and pathetic.

Donald Capps, in his book Jesus the Village Psychiatrist, contends that this man’s condition was attributable to psychological factors more than medical factors. He notes that when faced with great danger we can deflect the threat by attacking if we think we can prevail against it (the fight response). If we judge the threat to be beyond our resources, our options become escape (flight), self-inhibition (freeze), or collapse (faint). Capps believes that some traumatic episode happened in the man’s life 38 years earlier and initiated a collapse response that manifested itself through impaired mobility up to the day Jesus encountered him.

Think about all that has happened in your life since 1975; all that you have learned, accomplished, and experienced. If you can imagine what it would be like to have had your life put on hold from 1975 until today then you will have some insight into the life of the man by the pool. He deemed that whatever threatened him back in the day – a family problem, a work problem, a relational problem, a legal problem, whatever – to be so overwhelming that he simply collapsed into illness as a way to avoid it.

When Jesus meets him he poses what at first seems like an astounding question: “Do you want to be made well?” The obvious answer is “Of course I do. Who wants to be ill for 38 years?” I might have asked an even more obvious question: “What is the matter with you? Why are you hanging out by this pool and pinning all your hopes on superstitious nonsense?” or even worse, “Why are you faking this problem, you miserable, lazy slacker?” Jesus approaches the man not with condemnation or criticism, but with possibility: “Do you want to be made well?”

Notice how the man’s response reveals his deep, inner sense of helplessness and victimization: “I don’t have anyone to put me in the water and as I make my way to it someone else always gets their first.” In his mind he can’t be made well because he has no one to help him and because there is a limited supply of wellness that other people have better access to thus denying it to him. He believes himself powerless in the face of his situation. But Jesus does not believe this about him. In just seven words Jesus tells the man to do three things: “Stand up”, “Pick up your mat,” and “Walk!” As the man does these three things his 38 year-long collapse comes to an end.

John’s Gospel indicates that the man is made well, but no where does it suggest that this was some kind of a miracle – a suspending of natural laws in order to affect a cure. What it suggests is that faith in God and faith in oneself are a powerful and potent combination necessary to get one’s life going again after a setback. Jesus demonstrates God’s deep desire not the lay blame but to offer new life. His focus was not on what happened to the man nor did he comment on why it had been prolonged for nearly four decades. Rather, he pointed to the possibility of a new start, of literally and figuratively getting back on your feet again. And the man, for his part, exhibited faith in himself: I can stand up, I can carry my load, I can move forward from this point toward a better life.

One of the most significant changes I have witnessed in our society since 1975 is the manner in which patients take an active role in their medical treatment. We no long sit back passively and expect a trained professional to make us better. When faced with a health crisis we now research and educate ourselves about its many facets and dimensions as well as various treatment options and plans. Flight, freeze, and faint are no longer the order of the day. We fight; we attack that which threatens us. This faith in ourselves, combined with faith in God’s desire to bring us to a place of health, are (as I said earlier) a powerful and potent combination.

Time and again I have witnessed people have their life rocked to the core. Sometimes it comes about through the loss of a job, other times as a result of a broken relationship, and still other times through the death of a loved one. There are many different ways to lie beside the pool waiting for the water to stir and hoping that someone else will do for you what you do not believe you can do for yourself. That wait can be interminable. But I have seen countless people find faith in themselves and in God and as a result stand up, carry their load, and get moving forward in life once again.

For that man by the pool, whatever happened to him 38 years earlier he deemed to be more than he could handle. And then one day he realized that with God’s help he had the ability to take it on. For you and for me, there will be times in our life when we will feel overwhelmed; times when flight, freeze, or faint are our only options. But then in time we will come to sense that with God on our side no challenge is too big for us to overcome.

There is no shame by getting knocked down by one of life’s heavy blows. There will be times – many times perhaps – when life will hit us with more than we can handle. Each of us knows what it is like to take the equivilent of what in boxing they call the “8-count.” Being knocked down is one thing, staying down in another. The man by the pool serves to remind us that healing is in our hands and in our faith. Jesus reminds us that God is always with us to restore life, vitality, possibility, and hope. Thank God for the times God has come to each one of us and in some form or fashion said, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk.”

A Command... to Love One Another

Here is a true story from a former parishioner in Richmond. This past week was Dwight’s birthday. He is the father of three very rambunctious boys. Just as he was about to blow out the candles on his cake the oldest stopped him. “Dad, what are you going to wish for?” “Hummm,” he said reflectively, “I can’t decide. Either a plush, green lawn free of weeds, or a head full of hair, or an evening where my boys get along and don’t argue or wrestle.” The oldest thought for a moment and then said, “Better go with the green grass.”


If you grew up with a sibling or two, chances are your parents admonished you on more than one occasion to get along. I have two sisters and during our childhood it was always two against one, although the allegiances were never fixed hard and fast. Our bickering and harsh treatment of one another was a terrible source of frustration for our parents and more than once they laid down the law that we had to stop fighting.

Being ordered to be nice is perhaps the least productive way to accomplish a change in behavior and yet that is what Jesus does in today’s gospel reading. Do you recognize the setting? It is Maundy Thursday. Jesus has gathered his followers in the Upper Room. They are eating the Passover meal. Jesus has shared with them the bread and wine of his body and blood. He has washed their feet… all of them; even Peter’s, who protested, and even Judas’, who was about to betray him. Then he tells them this: “I am not going to be with you much longer, so listen up. I am giving you a new commandment… love one another as I have loved you.”

Did you watch the college men’s basketball tournament last month? If so, you know that Louisville won the championship after Kevin Ware, one of their players, suffered a gruesome broken leg during a nationally televised game. The nature of the injury shocked everyone, especially Ware’s teammates who cried openly while he was being treated on the court. They came to his side as he was taken from the arena and Kevin had one thing he wanted to tell them: win the championship. In effect his message was ‘if you care about me, honor me by winning it all.’

When Jesus tells his followers to love one another as he loved them he is letting them know what they have to do if they want to honor him: “The love that you have for me you must now demonstrate in the way you treat one another.” But make no mistake about it, the ‘commandment’ part of what Jesus said is important too. Yes, each disciple wanted to honor Jesus, but he could hardly have picked a more challenging way for them to do it.

You see, the disciples were anything but a homogenous group. There was a former tax-collector (read, capitulator with the occupying Roman government) and a zealot (read, insurgent bent on overthrowing the government). There were folks from Nazareth and there was Nathaniel, an educated elitist who believed people from Nazareth were backwater hicks. One disciple was a doctor, several others were fishermen. Think of it as white collar verses blue collar. There was Peter – older, boisterous, impetuous – and there was John – a quiet, reflective youth. As a group they were given to bickering about who among them was the greatest. The mother of two brothers lobbied for her boys to receive special honor in Jesus’ kingdom. As a group, they were not predisposed to love one another by virtue of similarity, nor where they inclined to love one another because they were told to do so.

And yet they did. Through the power and the grace of God they became a people whose love for one another overflowed into a love for the whole world. In and through their actions the Gospel of Jesus Christ became a message and a force that could not be stopped.

When I look at the church today (and when I look at myself) I recognize how it is easy for us to love as Christ loved those people with whom we are naturally affectioned and find easy to love. And I recognize in the church (and in myself) how difficult it is to love as Christ loved those people who are greatly differnet from us or who have challenging personalities.

One year to the day before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King gave a speech at Riverside Church in New York City to a group of clergy and laity concerned about the war in Vietnam. For King, the war was a symptom of a deeper malady in the American spirit and he called on each of us to turn away from the “militarism and violence” inside ourselves:

“This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is really a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love of all men. This oft-misunderstood and misinterpreted concept so readily dismissed by… the world as a weak and cowardly force – has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of a sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door that leads to ultimate reality.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.”

King went on to quote Arnold Toynbee, who said, “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.”

King’s words, from a different time with a different struggle, still seem to say something challenging in our day. He calls on us not to domesticate Jesus’ new commandment into something as tame as ‘neighborly concern’, although this is an aspect of how we live into the commandment. The love that King lifted up is more risky, more costly, and ultimately more victorious. It transforms the world first by transforming us.

St. Augustine wrote:

“The soul is weighed in the balance by what delights her. Delight or enjoyment sets the soul in her ordered place. Where delight is, there is the treasure."

We can be sure that Jesus’ disciples did not delight in loving one another. At first, it was something they did simply because they were told to do so. But the funny thing is that sometimes the heart has a way of falling in line with the hands and the feet. In other words, act out of love often enough and at some point you will find yourself being filled with love.

John Ohmer, a colleague of mine in the Diocese of Virginia, now serves as rector of a parish that had left the diocese a few years ago. Many chose not to leave, some have come back, and together they are forging a new path for this historic congregation. Here is how John describes who they now are and what they do:

“Speaking at least for The Falls Church Episcopal, we really mean it when we say ‘the Episcopal Church welcomes you’ – we mean absolutely everyone: gay or straight, conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, young or old, rich or poor, divorced, married, single, black, white, Latino, Asian, full-of-faith or full-of-doubts, lifelong Christian or never having stepped foot in a church in your life. It doesn’t make any difference because we don’t define ourselves by our differences – we define ourselves by what we have in common – and that’s our faith in God, love for one another, and service to the community.”

That parish, like ours I think, is stretching itself far beyond the easy love of neighborly concern.

Had it been Jesus’ birthday at the Last Supper, and had a disciple asked him what he was wishing for before he blew out the candles, Jesus might just have said, “That you all will love one another as I have loved you.” “How about we keep your vineyard weeded and pruned,” the disciple might have said back.

But as it is, Jesus did not make a wish, he gave a command. It is so tempting to make this one easier to follow by removing its teeth. We neuter it and make it palitable, but in the process rob it of its ability to transform the world and to transform us. The victory of Christ over sin and hate is watered down to just being pleasant. And being pleasant didn’t win the world for Christ nor does it strike me as worthy of commanding when it is little more than demonstrating nice manners. No, the love that Jesus shows each one of us demands nothing less than putting our old nature and our old ways and our old self to death so that we might live for him who died for us. If we take the commandment seriously it will be the most difficult thing we do in life, but also the best. In time, through the grace of God, what begins as command will become our delight and in the process it will change the world around us.

The Shepherding Instinct

 

  I informed the Vestry last winter that Al Reese and I entered into a joint business venture. We built an ice skating rink in the middle of a field on the outskirts of downtown Suffolk. It seemed like a good idea at the time, given that there is no where in the Tidewater area for people to skate. The day before we were set to open, Al and I stood in the field surveying our project. Just then we happened to see a shepherd leading his flock through the field. Rather than go around our rink, the shepherd decided to drive his flock across it. The sheep, having never seen ice before, naturally were afraid and refused to move. Desperate, the shepherd used his crook to tug the sheep to the other side. That is when Al turned to me and said, “Would you look at that, the shepherd is trying to pull the wool over our ice.” I dissolved our business partnership immediately and the matter is now in the courts.

As I said at the beginning of the service, the Fourth Sunday after Easter is known as ‘Good Shepherd’ Sunday. The Collect for the Day and the assigned readings point to one of the most enduring images in the bible. I imagine that most of us here have never seen a shepherd at work, let alone done the work of a shepherd first hand, and yet we still understand much of the meaning conveyed by the metaphor.

I enjoy watching “Through the Wormhole”, a cable TV show narrated by Morgan Freeman that attempts to stay current with all the latest theories regarding reality. In short, we live in a universe that is much, more complex than we ever imagined. Some theorists hypothesize the existence of multiple universes separated by thin membranes. While I am not advocating for this idea, I will tell you that as I watch these shows I find my faith both affirmed and challenged.

The more we come to understand the complexities of reality the more I am convinced that an intelligence beyond our imagining is behind it all; bringing it into being and sustaining it. That is what affirms my faith. The challenge is this: the more complex we know reality to be the more difficult I find it to believe that this powerful, intelligent Creator is intimately connected to you or to me. Given that reality is so big and so vast and so complex, how can a Creator be concerned with and related to each and every specific aspect of it?

For people of faith, our answer to that question is not laid out in a concrete theory or mathematical formula. Rather, it points to this day and lifts up another reality: that from the beginning of the faith people of faith have experienced God’s intimate presence in their lives. One of the ways they have described this sensation is captured in the simple phrase, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”

No person of faith has ever proclaimed, “The Lord is the C.E.O.”: a remote person in a far off city isolated in a lavish office at the top of a high, inaccessible tower whose influence and control filters down through many, many layers and intermediaries. Our experience of God is personal. It is intimate. And any theory of reality needs to account for it.

We sense in God what today I want to call ‘the shepherding instinct.’ We are most keenly aware of God’s presence when we are fearful, hurting, or in danger. It is during these moments in the dark valley that we are most aware we are not alone. We sense that God does not abandon us in our moment of need, but is with us to see us through.

We human beings who are created in God’s image have this shepherding instinct woven into our very nature. This week we saw it so clearly when, within seconds after deadly explosions killed and maimed people at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, folks nearby rushed toward danger to help the injured. We saw it also in the small town of West, Texas where firefighters and first responders risked life and lost life to protect others. When God created humanity in God’s own image, God looked on it and proclaimed it “very good.” As we witnessed countless selfless, heroic acts this past week we can understand why. God sees in us God’s own shepherding instinct.

I see it in less dramatic manifestations in our own faith community time and time again; like yesterday at a ceremony to award Hack Gallotta the rank of Eagle Scout. As one person said, ‘It is not an honor your earn, but one you grow into.” While Hack deserves all the credit in the world, I couldn’t help but think he did not grow into being an Eagle Scout on his own. Dozens of men, women, and peers supported and encouraged him along the way. It is one way the shepherding instinct manifests itself in, around, and through us.

Last Saturday evening I saw the instinct as it came out in a slightly different manner. Senior Warden Grier Ferguson appeared at my front door minutes before six in the evening. He had tried to call, but unbeknownst to me my phone was on silence… ah, the blessing of being on vacation. It seems the Wallers had taken some food to Dr. Thomas’ home as a part of our Loaves and Fishes Ministry and learned that he wanted to receive communion. When the Wallers couldn’t get a hold of me they called Grier. I drove up to Chuckatuck and spent some time with Doc and his family. As we passed through the kitchen, Katherine, his daughter, pointed out the food that Roy and Shirley had brought and expressed how grateful the family was for it. I looked at it only briefly but continue to see it in my mind’s eye because it is a sacramental expression of the shepherding instinct – an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace in each one of us.

This day we celebrate and give thanks for God’s shepherding instinct; for how God leads us through life, cares for us, protects us, heals us, and one day brings us home. We give thanks for every time another person has incarnated God’s shepherding instinct through their own life. And this day we lift up ourselves and pray that the shepherding instinct might grow in us so that we can manifest God’s life and love through our very lives.

Signs of Misery & the Merciful Heart

A Sunday School teacher posed a question to her third-grade class: “What do you have to be to get into heaven?” The hand of a little boy shot up into the air: “You have to be really, really good. You have to make sure you keep all of God’s commandments and not break a single one.” “Well,” the teacher said, “That is important, but it is not enough.” A little girl raised her hand: “You have to be good, but you also have to go to church every week.” “That too is important,” said the teacher, “but it is not enough.” Another girl thought she had the answer: “You have to be good, go to church, and do things to help the poor and needy.” “All of these things are good,” the teacher said, “but they are not enough. What do you have to be to get into heaven?” A boy raised his hand, wildly gesturing as if a light had gone off inside him and he had the answer: “You have to be all those other things. They are really important. But there is one more thing you have to be to get into heaven.” “Yes,” the teacher said in breathless anticipation, “and what is that.” Brimming with confidence the boy said, “You have to be dead!”


Dead is what Frederick Samuel was, at the age of 56. At the burial service his cousin, Les Murray, the renowned Australian poet, read an original composition written for the somber occasion. Patterned after the rhymes of a pub ballad, Murray gave it the title “The Misery Cord.” It was a pun spun off the Latin word ‘misericordia’, which literally means “merciful heart.” For the few here whose Latin may be a little rusty, the word for “wretched” (miserabilis) and the word for ‘pity’ (miseratio) are also closely related. Murray’s poem, largely devoid of mercy, focuses in much more on the wretched misery of death.

In one stanza he writes:

Grief is nothing you can do, but do,
worst work for least reward,
pulling your heart out through your eyes
with tugs of the misery cord.

Any of us who have gone through a painful loss can identify with Murray’s words: grief is the worst work for the least reward. Listen to the final stanza:

Just one man has broken the misery cord
and lived. He said once was enough.
A poem is an afterlife on earth.
Christ grant us the other half.

Murray’s word play and poem present a striking image of a human being praying and searching for mercy in the midst of personal misery. It seems to me that today’s Gospel reading presents Jesus as the antithesis of this image. His body bears the marks of misery while his being has become the epitome of misericordia – the Merciful Heart.

The Church places a great deal of emphasis on Holy Week, and with good reason. The Gospels chronicle well the events from Palm Sunday through the crucifixion and burial of our Lord. I wish we had more detail as to what took place the first week after Easter. We know that women go to the tomb and find it empty. We know they tell the others and that a few investigate. We know that Jesus appears first to Mary in the garden and then to those gathered behind locked doors. We also know that Thomas was not present at this time. We know that Jesus walks with two disciples on the road to Emmaus and is made known to them in the breaking of the bread. All of this took place on Easter Sunday.

We don’t know much about what happened next. Did the disciples celebrate? Did they preach? Did they go to the temple to pray? Did they continue to hide? Did they begin to doubt what had happened? The Gospels are silent about the events of this first week after the resurrection. All we know is that Thomas was not present and could not believe in the Merciful Heart until he himself touched the signs of misery. In his book Resurrection, Rowan Williams observes that in the Gospels there is a “consistent echo of disorientation… concerning the resurrection… [and a] piercing note of shock.” I suspect much of that first week was consumed with wild swings of emotion: joy, disbelief, fear, excitement… any many, many questions. Question #1 for Thomas was it just cannot be possible, can it?

Thomas was a twin. In her poem St. Thomas Didymus (didymus being the Greek word for ‘twin’), Denise Levertov imagines that Thomas finds his spiritual twin in a person Jesus encountered in the 9th chapter of Mark’s gospel. The man, a father, brings his son to Jesus. From birth the son has suffered from seizures and convulsions. In the poem, Thomas imagines how the son’s suffering must have damaged the father’s faith. The father must have asked himself over and again “Why?” Why this? Why my son? Why not somebody else? Why not me? When he approaches Jesus he says, “If you are able, will you please help my son?” “If I am able,” Jesus replies, “You must believe.” “I do believe,” the father responds, “Help my unbelief.” And with that the boy is healed. While the father celebrates and the crowd marvels, Levertov’s Thomas is left with the haunting question of why. Such is the curse of doubters.

The poem continues in Thomas’ voice:

So it was
that after Golgotha
my spirit in secret
lurched in the same convulsed writhings
that tore that child
before he was healed.

And after the empty tomb
when they told me that He lived,
had spoken to Magdalen,
told me
that though He had passed through the door
like a ghost
He had breathed on them
the breath of a living man –
even then
when hope tried with a flutter of wings
to lift me –
still, alone with myself,
my heavy cry was the same: Lord
I believe,
help thou mine unbelief.

I needed
blood to tell me the truth,
the touch
of blood. Even
my sight of the dark crust of it
round the nailholes
didn’t thrust its meaning all the way through
to that manifold knot in me
that willed to possess all knowledge,
refusing to loosen
unless that insistence won
the battle I fought with life

But when my hand
led by His hand’s firm clasp
entered the unhealed wound,
my fingers encountering
rib-bone and pulsing heat,
what I felt was not
scalding pain, shame for my
obstinate need,
but light, light streaming
into me, over me, filling the room
as I had lived till then
in a cold cave, and now
coming forth for the first time,
the knot that bound me unravelling,
I witnessed
all things quicken to color, to form,
my question
not answered but given
its part
in a vast unfolding design lit
by a risen sun.

It is a brilliant, vivid description of transformation. Self-manifested hope fails to lift his heart out of the cry of loneliness. Encountering the Risen Christ does not make Thomas ashamed of who he is – a person knotted up with doubt – but rather fills him with light and with color.

Literary critics will tell you that the climax of John’s Gospel – everything it has been building on and working toward – comes when Thomas says to Jesus, “My Lord and my God.” Keep in mind that the Gospel was written perhaps fifty years or more after the resurrection. Few remained who had known Jesus first hand. So Jesus’ response to Thomas’ confession would have been especially powerful and poignant to those early readers: “Do you believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Blessed are we who neither have seen nor have touched the misery marks on the Merciful Heart, and yet still have found our lives filled with light and color through faith in the Risen Lord.

The Marxist Leon Trotsky spent the last years of his life living in exile as punishment for his opposition of Joseph Stalin, who eventually had Trotsky assassinated in 1940. Prior to that, Trotsky made the following entry in his dairy:

Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

When Thomas touches the signs of Jesus’ misery he finds for himself the great idea that gives form to the remainder of his life: Alleluia. Christ is risen!  It is the great idea that has changed the world.  It is the great idea that has been proclaimed to the farthest reaches of the earth.  It is the great idea that has been passed down through the generations.  It is the great idea that brings us together this morning.  It is the great idea that fills our lives with light and color, transforming misery through the presence of the Merciful Heart.

The Star Thrower

George struggled mightily every year to come up with a birthday present for his eccentric mother. She was a very worldly woman, affluent, sophisticated, and not easily impressed. No matter how unique, exotic, or lavish his gift might be, it failed to do more than elicit a faint scoff of appreciation from her. The day before her 75th birthday George was on the lookout for something special. He happened into a pet store and found exactly what he needed: a beautiful talking parrot with a colorful plume of long, lush feathers. Amazingly, it had growing a vocabulary of over 4,000 words and was conversant in three different languages. The owner of the store told George this bird was one a kind and the price reflected it… $25,000! George thought the bird would be a perfect gift. It was friendly and good company. He figured his mother would take to it instantly and spend hours teaching it to say more and more words. He imagined she would revel in showing it off to her friends who would be spellbound by its ability to talk. George bought the bird and had owner deliver it personally to his mother’s house that afternoon. The next morning George called her to wish her happy birthday. “Did you get my gift yesterday,” he asked her? “I most certainly did,” she said. “So tell what do you think?” “Well, son,” she said, “It was a little tough and tasted like chicken!”


George’s poor mother. She was in the presence of something remarkable, but didn’t comprehend it. The same could be said about Jesus’ followers on the first Easter Sunday. The women come to the tomb and find it empty. Two angels tell them Jesus has risen from the dead as he had said he would. They go to tell the others about their experience. The text hints that the women don’t know what to make of the angels’ words and it states quite clearly that those who hear their story don’t believe a word of it. Only Peter goes to the tomb to investigate. He finds it empty, except for the burial linens, and is amazed. Amazed though is a far cry from proclaiming that the Lord is risen indeed.

We can’t blame those first followers for being slow to discern what had happened. Like a computer that does not have the software to recognize and run a file, they had no frame of reference to understand resurrection. They struggled with it. So do we even to this day. Faith in the resurrection comes to each of us in its own unique way.

Loren Eiseley was an educator, naturalist, and author who has been called a modern day Thoreau. In his book The Unexpected Universe he writes about an experience he had at a seaside town that changed his life. Walking on the beach he found it littered with starfish washed up by the tide. The grains of sand filled their tiny breathing pours, the sun baked their bodies, and gulls by the dozens pecked at their remains. Greedy tourists and merchants picked up starfish by the bagful. It was an awful sight. It was then that Eiseley met a person he came to refer to as ‘the star thrower’:

"I discerned a human figure standing. He was gazing fixedly at something in the sand. He stooped and flung an object beyond the breaking surf. I labored another half a mile toward him and by the time I reached him, he was kneeling again. In a pool of sand and silt a starfish had thrust its arms up stiffly and was holding its body away from the stifling mud. “It’s still alive,” I ventured. “Yes,” he said, and with a quick, yet gentle movement, he picked up the star and spun it over my head and far out into the sea. “It may live if the offshore pull is strong enough,” he said. In a sudden embarrassment for words I said, “Do you collect starfish?” “Only ones like this,” he said softly, gesturing amidst the wreckage of the shore, “and only for the living.” He stooped again, and skipped another star neatly across the water. “The stars,” he said, “throw well. One can help them.” He looked full at me with a faint question kindling in his eyes. “No, I do not collect,” I said uncomfortably, the wind beating at my garments, “neither the living nor the dead. I gave it up a long time ago. Death is the only successful collector.”

Eiseley returned to his room and could not stop thinking about the star thrower. As a naturalist, Eiseley was keenly aware of the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest, which was on proud display there at the beach: the sun, the gulls, the tourists, the merchants all having their way with the helpless starfish, but not the star thrower. When he reached down it was not to crush and not to collect; it was to save. Eiseley began to wonder if there was a star thrower at work in the universe; a God who reaches down and saves us. As a naturalist, the more he had studied life in all its rich variety and forms the more he had come to love and admire it. Could it be, he wondered, that the God who created life loved it too much to let it end? If God is the one who gives life to all things can this God somehow reverse the curse of death and make it to be no more?

For Christians the answer is a resounding yes. It is yes not because we wish it to be so, and not because we can not bear the thought of dying, but because we believe that Jesus Christ overcame death and the grave. We now live our life in full assurance that death no longer reigns as the last collector. God has reached from the heavens and demonstrated that the power of resurrection is greater than the power of death.

On that first Easter morning, it is not that the disciples lacked faith. What they lacked was understanding. An empty tomb did not mean resurrection. It meant that the body was gone. Who removed it and where did they put it? Two disciples decide to leave town. They set out on foot toward Emmaus. They are confused, broken, and defeated. The rest remain near Jerusalem gathered behind locked doors. They are fearful that the authorities will be coming to arrest them. They have no idea what to do. They have no one to lead them.

Within fifty days this sad and sorry lot of folks will be transformed into a bold force proclaiming Jesus as the Risen Lord, the Son of the Living God. They will travel all over the known world, and endure hardship, suffering, and persecution. All but one will be martyred. None, not a single one, will recant the story of the Resurrection. None, not a single one, will say, “You know, we made it up as a way to keep the Jesus movement going.” With every breath until their last breath each will proclaim that God raised Jesus from the dead and each will die in the sure and certain hope of their own resurrection. And the world will never be the same.

And now, 2000 years later we understand what the angels told those women who came to the tomb. Their news is good news to us, but it is not new news. We have the software to run the file. We acknowledge that the tomb is empty because Jesus is risen. But it seems like something is missing in our response. For those first followers faith in the resurrection was life-changing. It turned their world upside down. None of us is going to leave today’s service with a missionary zeal to convert the world. I get that. But how should belief in the resurrection shape and change your life and mine? What does it look like to live as Easter people?

Over the course of his life Loren Eiseley told and retold the story the star thrower. At one point in their conversation, Eiseley said to him, “There are thousands upon thousands of starfish on this beach. You can’t possible hope to save them all. Why do you even bother? Don’t you realize that all your efforts don’t make a difference?” The star thrower bent down picked up a star, threw it out into the surf, and said, “Well, my efforts made a difference for that one.”

Seeing an empty tomb may leave you confused and speechless, but when you meet the risen Lord your life is forever changed. You become an Easter person with an Easter faith. How will you make a difference?

Having a Purpose

Joe had two loves in his life: golf and Shelia… in that order. It was a rather odd combination given that Joe was a hack golfer at best and that Shelia had never even seen the game played. When the two married, Joe convinced Shelia to go on a golfing honeymoon. “Don’t worry,” he told his new bride, “I’ll teach you how to play.” They arrive at their destination and Joe eagerly escorts his new bride out to the first tee. He sets up the ball, takes a step back, and unleashes a mighty swing with his driver. The club hits the ground a full foot behind the ball, scattering turf and dirt everywhere. The ball does not move. Somewhat embarrassed, Joe takes another swing and misses again. Flustered, he tries a third time sends more dirt sailing. After his fifth miss, Shelia looks at him and says, “I can see where you get a lot of exercise playing this game, but I fail to see the purpose of the ball.”


If I asked you to explain the purpose of golf, you would tell me to hit the ball down the fairway toward the green and into the cup using the fewest swings possible. Some are better at it than others. Let me ask you this: what is the purpose of life? The answer to this question is a bit less clear and varies from person to person. In fact, how we answer – if we have an answer at all – may even vary from day to day. If we don’t know the purpose of life how do we know if we are living it well? In golf you have a scorecard. It tells you how you are doing over the course of eighteen holes. But what about life? How do you measure the way you are living?

Do you remember the conversation Alice had when she first encountered the Cheshire Cat? Confused as to where she was she asks the cat, “Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” the cat replies. “I don’t much care where,” she responds. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” says the cat. Doesn’t it follow that if you don’t know the purpose of life than you won’t care much how you do at living?

The English poet John Dryden didn’t think much of the Duke of Buckingham so he wrote this little ditty about him:

A man so various, that he seem’d to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

It is the perfect description of a person who lacks a purpose and a passion in life. It may bring to mind someone you know. Perhaps you even see a little of yourself in it.

I read recently of a gentleman who upon meeting someone for the first time never asked conventional questions such as “what do you do for a living?” or “where are you from?” He asked people “what have you done that you believe in and are proud of? For some it is an unsettling question, but not for all. One woman told him that she was doing a good job raising her two children. A cabinetmaker told him, “I believe in good workmanship and practice it.” Another person she had started a flower shop and that it was the best for miles around.” Perhaps the first step to finding the purpose of life is to have a good answer to the question “what have you done that you believe in and are proud of?”

Every year as I listen to the Passion reading I am always struck by how Jesus was in charge of nothing yet in control of everything. He lived his life with purpose and with passion: healing the sick, calling the lost, forgiving the sinner, lifting up the downtrodden, welcoming the outcast, challenging the proud, confronting the powerful, and proclaiming the presence of the Kingdom of God in the midst of a society that looked like anything but. He knew who he was, he embraced his calling, and he accepted the consequences that came with it.

In the preface to his book Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw wrote this:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one: the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap, and being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

That quote it helps me to understand why I so deeply admire Jesus. He lived with a mighty purpose, he persisted to the end, and strived in all ways to make the world a better place. I admire his singular clarity about living. I suspect that if we could ask Jesus what he had done that he believed in and what he was proud of he would say he believed in the Kingdom and God and was proud of the way he lived and died for it.

As you listen again to the Passion of our Lord I wonder if you come away with the same sense I do, that your life is small in comparison. It is not that I have to be the Messiah, the one who saves all humanity. That is not my goal, my calling, or my purpose or yours. But don’t you sit back and wonder if you are doing something great that is well within your ability? The old evangelist Billy Sunday once noted that more people fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent. I suspect he is right.

Jesus died because he had a purpose to his life; a purpose which called humanity to live as God intends and as a result threatened those in power. I am suggesting that many of us fail to live because we have not discerned a great purpose in life; a purpose worthy of the name ‘Christian’ – a follower of Christ.

For many of us Holy Week will be the most spiritual week of the year. We will attend services, gather in fellowship, read the bible, and relive the last moments of our Lord’s life. There are many ways one can approach this time reverently and prayerfully. I encourage you to use this week to think about your purpose in life; to consider how and when you are living small, going in no particular direction, and not thinking twice about any of it. Perhaps your prayer can be, “O God, I want to be like Jesus. Please guide me to something I can believe that will make me proud of what I do.”

Emotion and Devotion

She is overcome with deep emotion. Her brother, who died, lives. And he lives because the person she blamed for his death, the healer who had the power to help him but initially stayed away and did not come to his aid, called him back to life: “Lazarus, come out of the tomb.” And now, a few days later, the healer and his companions are in her home having dinner. She is there with her sister and her brother. It is not the first time they have entertained the healer, but it is the first time since he raised her brother from the dead. She is overcome with deep emotion.


But it is even more than that. Mary is filled with a sense of awe and wonder. She now understands that Jesus is more than a teacher and more than a healer. She senses that he is the Lord of life, the Son of the Living God, the Messiah. She is overcome with deep devotion in the presence of one who is Holy Other.

Emotion and devotion are a potent and powerful combination in a person. Working together they can guide us to do amazing things; things which may not make sense to those who do not share our sentiments. We will give generously of our time, willingly of our talents, sacrificially of our treasure, and freely of life itself in response to God.

This past week the Episcopal Church celebrated the life and witness of James Theodore Augustus Holly who was born a free African American in 1829 and ordained to the priesthood in 1855. He served a congregation in New Haven for five years prior to accepting mission work in Haiti. During the first year there his mother, his wife, and two of his children died. Somehow Holly endured and, along with two young sons, he continued the work he felt called by God to do. In 1874 Holly was ordained bishop of Haiti, becoming the first black man to hold this office in our church. Over the course of his episcopacy Holly doubled the membership of the diocese, which is now the largest in the Episcopal Church. He also founded numerous schools, hospitals, and clinics prior to his death in 1911. As I read Bishop Holly’s biography this week, I was amazed at what he accomplished given all that he lost so early in his ministry. Emotion and devotion are a powerful and potent combination in a person.

Mary is overcome with both. She must do something for her Lord, but what? What act, what gesture, what words, what offering would capture even a fragment of what she feels for Jesus and what she believes about him?

She lands on what she will do. The text does not tell us if she planned this for days or if the idea comes to her out of the blue. She decides to anoint Jesus from head to toe with a pound of costly perfume. How costly? 300 denarii – a denarii being equivalent to a day’s wage. We are talking about a perfume that in our time would run anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000. Her act is lavish. It is extravagant. It is the product of deep emotion and deep devotion.

And it causes an outrage. The house quickly fills with the perfume’s aroma and all who are in it are drawn to Mary’s action. John’s gospel tells us that only Judas protests, but as the other gospellers tell the story they indicate that all of Jesus’ followers are offended by an act they see as wasteful beyond words. In a sense, Judas is correct. The perfume could have been sold and the money could have been given to the poor. Of course, he had no intention of letting any proceeds slip through his hands. Jesus accepts Mary’s action and defends her by saying the poor will always be with us, but rare are the opportunities we have to express devotion to him.

Today’s gospel reading interests the life of our congregation in a fascinating way. This is our first opportunity to worship in this space since the restored Ascension window is back in place. In a word, it is stunning. It will inspire worshippers for generations to come. On those rare occasions when my sermon is not up to snuff, you can turn your gaze to the north side of the building and be spiritually nurtured by this incredible piece of sacred art.

In terms of cost and the way in which it fills this space, the Ascension window shares much in common with Mary’s perfume. Perhaps some of our local historians know something of the life of Nannie Stuart Elley in whose memory the window is dedicated. A few of you may know of Alfred and Alice Verner in whose memory a previous restoration is dedicated. We certainly know the Holland family whose generosity has provided funds for this particular window during our current restoration project. I am confident that at some level each of the donors was motivated by deep emotion and devotion; gratitude for those they love, but see no longer and praise for the God who gives life at birth and after death.

This day we also collect change to fund a project that will provide a well for a village in an underdeveloped part of the world, transforming everything about daily life for those who receive it. The cost to do this is modest, $750. Many of us have given up something for Lent and set aside the money we have saved to contribute to the collection. Before this day begins we already have over $500 turned in. I give thanks for the way we have come together in Lent around this effort.

When all is said and done, our stained glass window restoration project will cost around $135,000. I don’t know how much we’ll raise for the well, but it would not surprise me if it exceeds $1,000. In the end, what we give to the poor in relation to what we invest in our windows will be in line with guidelines for the Millennium Development Project, which suggests every congregation contribute 0.7% of its budget to funding one of the goals.

The poor are always with us, as Jesus reminds us. I intend to keep this reality ever before our congregation. I am pleased that you respond to the gospel by meeting the needs of others and by being open and accepting of new opportunities we have to demonstrate Christ’s compassion to a hurting world. This drive within us as individuals and as a faith community is something much deeper than a desire ‘to do good.’ It is fueled by our love and devotion for our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sustainer. What we invest in this building to enhance and maintain it is a sacred place set apart for prayer and praise is right and good and acceptable to God.

Serving God and extending compassion to others are powerful ways to express deep emotion and deep devotion. At some level each of us understands Mary’s actions – what she did and why she did it. At some point in our lives each of us has felt what she felt that day Jesus came to her home for dinner. Each of us has been touched by God’s grace and love and each of us has tried to find some appropriate way to express our gratitude and devotion. Mary’s act and Jesus’ acceptance of it gives us permission not to hold back; to abandon all common sense and restraint; to do that thing which is welling up inside us to give glory, honor, worship, and praise to our Lord. What might that be in you?