Do you accept that Jesus is Lord?

Acts 10:34-43
Colossians 3:1-4
Matthew 28:1-10
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

The question about what happened to the body of Jesus in the early dawn of that Sunday morning is not the essential Easter question.  The most important thing about the resurrection isn’t that something happened to Jesus.  It is that something happened to us.  Strictly speaking, we can’t really know what that something is, because the resurrection is a process that is still ongoing.  The Letter to the Colossians is very clear on that point, when it says, “your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.” 

This is what Mary Magdalene and the other Mary found out when they went to the tomb that morning.  They went there full of grief, still reeling from the shock, trying to make sense of what had happened to Jesus.  They went to mourn and to cherish the memory of what had been lost, and they found something, something new, that now belonged to them.   They went to the tomb to say goodbye to the past and they came away as bearers of a message about the present and the future--a present and a future with Jesus.

Still, there is no getting around the fact that this message came to them at the tomb.  Resurrection gives new life and meaning to the story of Jesus, but it is still the same story that came to a head at the cross.  Easter does not reverse Good Friday.  But Good Friday and Easter together confirm what the story of Jesus is all about.  You could boil it down to a couple of points, and they were exactly the points that Jesus kept trying to make, and they were what got him into all that trouble.  The first one got him into trouble with his disciples, and I suppose it still does, and that was the point that his mission really wasn’t about him.  It wasn’t about his charisma, or his remarkable abilities, or his chances for success.  Jesus lived and died for us, for our repentance, our instruction and empowerment, our forgiveness, and healing, and liberation. 

The second point got Jesus into trouble with the religious leaders and political authorities, and it also still gives a lot of people problems.  And it was that the author of his life, the power behind his deeds, the source of his wisdom, and the driver of his mission was God.  It was God who sent Jesus on the road that led him to the cross, though it was not God who killed him.  And it was God who raised him from the dead—so there could be no doubt who was responsible for the sending, and who did the killing.

The church, then and now, is the community that gathers to experience the death and resurrection of Jesus as a present spiritual reality.  This Spirit tells us that Jesus did what he did by the anointing of God, and he did it to show us how to live together in peace and forgiveness and love.  And the very first Christian communities came up with a shorthand, a phrase that encapsulates all of this, which is simply, “Jesus is Lord.”  The essential question about the resurrection is not, what happened to the body in the tomb?  It is, “do you accept that Jesus is Lord?” 

Now before you go rushing to answer that question one way or another, let me state very clearly, just so nobody gets the wrong idea about me, or about this church, that any answer to that question is permitted here.  Seriously—I mean that.  And let me also say that I think that the acceptance that this question asks about is like the resurrection itself.  It’s not a box you check, and then move on to the line about your address and credit card number.  It’s a process.  We’ve only  begun to glimpse what it would mean to fully accept the Lordship of Jesus, which is to say, the total transformation of the world into the paradise of God.

But back to the story: the resurrection proves that Jesus was telling the truth about himself, even though nobody believed him.  Well, almost nobody.  Mary Magdalene and the other Mary believed, at least enough to risk sticking around to watch his crucifixion.  They believed enough to want to go to his tomb and pay their final respects.  I guess that is what made it possible for them to witness his resurrection, and to receive the message that the work that God is doing through Jesus is just getting started. 

But the male disciples, according to Mark and Matthew, aren’t ready yet.  Their hearts are still too clouded with guilt and fear; their heads are still too full of the splintered wreckage of the grandiose dreams that they brought with them to Jerusalem.  They will see Jesus.  They will experience his resurrection.  But not until they follow him back to Galilee.  They have to go back, back to the beginning, back to the place where he first came upon them, casting their nets into the lake.  Not to try to recapture the past.  Not to go on some kind of nostalgia trip, but to hear again in the present the voice of Jesus saying “follow me.”  They have to go back, carrying with them the memory of his death, and their part in it, and begin again to learn how to be his disciples.      

26 years ago I spent a couple of months in Nicaragua, building houses and seeing for myself what the counterrevolutionary war was doing to that country.  A lot of wonderful things happened to me there, and most of all I fell in love with the people.  And while I was there I met a young American, a mechanical engineer, who was machining parts and fixing up old 1930s windmills around the country to help the farmers pump water.  And maybe it was he who gave me this mild case of the romance of revolution, and I started to imagine learning about organic agriculture and going back to Nicaragua or some other down-trodden tropical country to help the people. 

But on my way back to the States I came through customs in the Houston airport.  And as I stood in line in the cavernous, dreary, understaffed, customs station, and I looked around at my own people—stressed-out, short-tempered, homesick Americans--it struck me as clear as a bell that the only difference between this place and Nicaragua was a few dollars, and they wouldn’t last forever.  In fact, that wave had already crested.  And I realized that if I wanted to help people, and develop and strengthen communities, and build the foundations of a just and sustainable society, the most important place in the world for me to do that work was right here in the good, old US of A.

In the 10^th Chapter of Acts, Peter tells Cornelius, the Roman Centurion, that Jesus is Lord of All, by which he means Lord of all peoples.  But he might as well have meant Lord of all times, all circumstances and situations.  As the exalted Son of God, Jesus is Lord of the Universe; and as the man who died on the cross, he is the servant of every particular thing in it.  He is Lord of Nicaragua and Lord of Petaluma.  He is Lord of your house, and your office, and your spouse and children.  He is Lord of your bank account, of your car, and the highway you drive on.  He is Lord of your bedroom, and bathroom, and the dishes in your kitchen sink.  He is Lord of your dreams and of your fears, of your proudest achievements, and your devastating losses.  And as many times as you forget him, or discount him, or betray him, he calls you back to begin again, a little humbler, maybe, a little wiser, to find his place in your life, and yours in his.

 When you leave here today, maybe humming one of those catchy Easter hymn tunes, and the flowers are blooming, and the hills are still green, and the color and the fragrance of spring are everywhere, everything you see will be a sign of his resurrection.  Everyone you meet will be his glorious image.  Nothing that happens to you, now or in the future, will be able to put him back in his grave, or remove his name from your lips or his word from your heart.  Or so I’ve been told.  And today I could almost believe it.            

Mother's Little Helper

Amos 8:1-12
Psalm 52
Colossians 1:15-28
Luke 10:38-42

Growing up in a family of four boys, I guess it was inevitable that one of us would have to be “Mother’s little helper,” and for whatever reason, I got the part.  Every evening, when the call came from the kitchen for a volunteer to set the table, I was that “volunteer.”  I was the one who learned to grind flour and bake the weekly bread.  I was the one who tried and failed to apprentice at the sewing machine.  The summer that my mother decided to market the surplus produce of her large and bountiful vegetable garden, I was the one anointed to spend my vacation as the proprietor of the road-side stand. 

Those early imprints are deep and lasting, as I discovered when I left home.  No matter how far from my mother I got, no matter where I went, or in whose company I found myself, I always seemed to be one of those who stood up when there was work to be done.  I was one you could count on to take responsibility for the thankless chores of keeping the house tidy, and the kitchen clean, and the people fed.  Which would have been admirable, I suppose, if I’d always done it with a loving and generous heart.

But this is where the story of Mary and Martha has a bite.  Because, like Martha, I wasn’t always happy to serve.  Sometimes I felt like I’d been saddled with an unfair and unwanted burden.  Sometimes I did the work because it made me feel less anxious, and sometimes I did it because it made me feel superior, and all the while I’d be looking sidelong with envy and resentment at those who seemed to have no guilty conscience about sitting idly, just enjoying themselves, and “going with the flow.”

This story has a bite of psychological truth, and it goes even deeper than I’ve already said.  Because if all Martha wants is a little help, why doesn’t she just go to her sister and ask for it?  Why does she create what Family Systems theorists call a “relationship triangle,” she dragging Jesus into her little drama, trying to guilt-trip him into taking her side?  Why does she ask him to judge between her and her sister, and to find Mary in the wrong, and chastise her for being lazy, like a disapproving dad? 

Needless to say, Jesus  doesn’t take the bait.  He knows Martha needs help, but not the kind of help she thinks she needs.  Martha needs to learn to let go, and it’s a lesson Mary can help her with, because she’s learning it from Jesus.

It’s not that there isn’t work to be done.  From the very beginning, the mission of Jesus has involved work—and not just the work of teaching and preaching and praying, but also the work of serving.  There has been bread to be baked, and tables to be set, and dishes to be washed.   And from the very beginning, Christians have looked around at the world and seen work to be done—widows and orphans going hungry, and sick people and prisoners lonely and in need of care and friendship.  They have looked around and seen justice denied, and peace forsaken.

And they have remembered the example of Jesus, and the self-sacrifice of his life and his cross.  They have remembered his teachings about self-denial and selfless service, like the parable of the Good Samaritan that comes immediately before this story in the Gospel of Luke, and they have gone to work.  But the story of Mary and Martha suggests that from the very beginning the work of Christians has also been a source of temptation.  Self-sacrifice, self-denial, and selfless service can easily become self-righteousness, just another yardstick by which we judge ourselves against each other, and against the world.  

Jesus knows this about us, and his reply to Martha lays bare the heart of the matter.  Because Martha’s real problem is not that her sister is lazy and won’t help with the housework.  Martha’s problem is that her heart is full of anxiety and can never come to rest.   Martha is anxious about the “many things” and lets them pull her in every direction because deep down she knows that none of them can ever give her what she really needs. 

So what is this only one thing that Martha, like the rest of us, truly needs?  Jesus doesn’t say, but he gives us some clues.  The first clue comes when he says that Mary has chosen the “better part.”  The way I read this, if Mary has chosen her part, then so must have Martha.  In other words, Martha thinks she doesn’t have a choice, that the “many things” absolutely must get done, and that if she is the one who must do them, but Jesus is questioning that.  Maybe these chores that Martha thinks are so all-important really aren’t.  What would happen if they didn’t get done until tomorrow, or not at all?  And why does Martha have to do them?  Maybe if she just left them alone, someone else would decide to get up and help.  But Martha will never know, because she keeps choosing to deny her own freedom and responsibility for the choices she has made.

A second clue about the only thing that is truly needed is what Jesus says about the part that Mary has chosen.  I don’t know exactly what he means when he says that it’s “better,” but I can accept as self-evident that he’s right.  But the thing that he says about it that I’ve always found really interesting is that “it will not be taken away from her.”  And this makes sense to me when I thought about as a teaching to Martha about the deeper reason she is so anxious about all those “many things” that have to get done.  Because any feeling of well-being, or self-worth, or inner peace that depends on getting all the work done isn’t going to last.  The work is never done.  You clean up the kitchen after dinner and the next thing you know it’s time to cook breakfast.  You feed one hungry family and five more appear at the door.  You fix the hole in the ozone layer, only to find out about the greenhouse effect.

Which is not to say that there’s no point in working.  But it does mean that the real importance of the work we do doesn’t derive from the results we achieve.  Thinking that way is a recipe for anxiety and distraction.  The real importance of what we do comes from who we are when we’re doing it.  And sometimes we learn best who that is when we aren’t doing much of anything at all, when we are just sitting there at the feet of Jesus.  Who we really are (which is the same as who we really want to be)—that is all we really need.  The author of the Letter to the Colossians calls it “the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations,” and goes on to say that God has made known to us the “riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” 

Nobody knows what words Mary heard when she sat at the foot of Jesus.  It’s not important—she heard the one Word that matters, the one Word we all need to hear, the Word of God about the riches of the glory of the mystery of Who she is, and Who she wants to be.  And I guess this is the better part of everything we do, the part that won’t be taken away.  Having this faith that Christ is in us and in others, having this hope of the glory that is yet to be revealed, we can do anything, or nothing.  It’s all pretty much the same.  It’s nothing to worry about, nothing to feel superior or inferior to others for.  It’s just a part we choose, because God speaks, and because we stop, for a moment, to listen.