An Idle Tale

Sermon Luke 24: 1-12 April 21, 2019 Easter

An Idle Tale

The women were the first to witness the resurrection of Jesus. They chose to share their joy with the other disciples. Yet, these words seemed an idle tale to them. Today we can ask ourselves the question, ‘what witness to the resurrection will we believe?’ ‘Is the resurrection a truth tale or an idle tale? Where have you encountered the resurrected Jesus?

Today our sermon comes to you in the form of a dialogue between Joanna and Mary Magdalene. Let’s listen in together.

Joanna: Mary, do you remember the day we went to the tomb and found it empty?

Mary: Oh, dear Joanna, do I ever! You know as well as I, it has turned our world upside down.

Joanna: Yes, it has. Who would have thought it? There we were grieving women following our tradition taking our spices to the tomb to care for the body of our Jesus…

Mary: I remember wondering how you the wife of Chuza, the steward of Herod, could get away without being followed by Herod’s guards. You had such courage to be a disciple of Jesus. Chuza was under incredible scrutiny in his job. It seemed like everyday Herod would ask him what he thought about Jesus.

Joanna: It’s true Chuza would come home always looking over his shoulder. He knew that Herod wanted to be rid of Jesus. He knew that Herod was ruthless and wanted to make sure no one in his region received more attention than himself. Yet, we felt a strong sense of God’s presence with us. I knew following Jesus was risky, but I knew he was our Lord. It was wonderful to support him and provide for him.

Mary: Jesus was always showing us his gratitude. No matter what those around him would say or do, Jesus always stopped and let us know how much he appreciated our hospitality. I miss him at table with us.

Joanna: Oh, Mary, I do too. We were so fortunate to be able to follow him everywhere and witness his healing power and his miracles. We were able to listen to him tell us stories about God’s love for us. We were able to feel his touch on our shoulders. We knew he was Lord because we were with him.

Mary: That’s true. But, the greater gift is we were witnesses to his resurrection.

Joanna: Oh yes, yes! Such an idle tale wasn’t it!

Mary: Laughter-Oh if I could have that day lived over again and again just to see the faces of John, James, Peter, and the rest. ‘An idle tale’ they told us. After all the years we had been with them and with Jesus, they couldn’t believe our truth. It still makes me laugh deep inside…those poor disciple men.

Joanna: Well, we should give them a little credit. We probably wouldn’t have believed them if they came running to us with the news of the empty tomb.

Mary: If it had been them to find the empty tomb first they might have taken up arms and gone after the Roman soldiers, there’s no telling what could have happened…but it didn’t happen that way…

Joanna: I still remember every detail of that morning. And the days that followed. You and Susanna, the other Marys, we all met on the path to the tomb. I got up at home as usual before the sun arose. I prepared some food for the family. Then, I gathered my basket and placed the jars of oils in it. You had a basket of spices. When we met on the road we realized we had more than we needed. But, none of us wanted to be without something to anoint our Lord.

Mary: We hugged each other and started toward the tomb. We talked about how the stone needed to be rolled away. We knew it was heavy. Other tombs in the area had smaller stones but this one was huge. I remember we also wondered about those guards.

Joanna: We weren’t sure what the Romans did with their dead. Would they understand our need to come and anoint the body of Jesus?

Mary: Before we could answer our own questions…we came to a sudden stop and just stared.

Joanna: We couldn’t believe our eyes. The stone was rolled away. We wondered if the other disciples had gone ahead of us. We went in to look, but the body of Jesus wasn’t there!

Mary: And suddenly two men appeared in the tomb with us. They just appeared! Scared us to death!

Joanna: Not quite death, we’re still here.

Mary: haha

Joanna: I remember their exact words. “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen…

Mary: As soon as those men told us, I remembered Jesus telling us those things, and my heart began to stir within me. I knew what he had told us was true. I believed!

Joanna: Some of us were not so sure. We were perplexed. But, still we knew we had to run and tell the others what we had seen and heard. We had to share the news.

Mary: We knew where to find the eleven. They had gone together after Jesus was buried. They had not left each other’s side. It was still the Passover and no one wanted to leave Jerusalem just yet. We were lost without Jesus. We really didn’t plan for him to die…and we really didn’t expect him to be alive again either!

Joanna: It was unbelievable! When we told the eleven they looked at us as if we were crazy. I remember Peter giving us one his looks. But, after all the guys kept repeating our words back to us and saying ‘idle tale, idle tale’, Peter just got up and ran out.

Mary: When he came back he had the same look on his face that we did. We sat there for hours not saying anything, wondering what it all meant.

Joanna: Now, so many years later, I still wonder if my response to the empty tomb would have been any different. I still wonder if it would have been any different if the men believed our witness, our testimony of what we saw?

Mary: Looking back, it was very different for each of us. John believed as soon as he walked in the tomb and saw the linen wrappings lying there. For me, it was when the words of Jesus came back to me through the words of the angels who appeared in the tomb.

Joanna: My story is so different from you and John and Peter. The empty tomb wasn’t a witness to the resurrection of Jesus for me. I remember thinking they just stole his body. I was upset. Confused. But not believing.

Mary: You always were a skeptic. You and Thomas were so much alike. I wonder if you two were related?

Joanna: Hey…That’s not fair. There are a lot of people in the world just like Thomas and me. We don’t buy into everything that comes along our path.

Mary: And so the rest of us were just gullible?

Joanna: No, nothing like that. It’s just that we’re all so different and Jesus knows that. God knows for sure, that’s why Jesus came. To meet each of us right where faith becomes real.

Mary: It’s where the joy and peace in believing fills us and we can witness to this truth of faith within us. It’s as if the resurrection has happened in our own hearts. It’s as if his new life fills us with new life.  At least that’s how I can explain the resurrection story for me. So what is your resurrection story?

Joanna: I think Jesus came alive for me when we were all in the same room together and he showed up. Before I saw him I heard his voice say, “Peace be with you.” It was the sound of his voice that warmed my heart and I believed. At that moment he came alive for me.

Mary: We’ve heard so many stories through these years. Now that Jesus has been gone for so long the stories are still so amazing. People come to us and tell us their story of how Jesus has come alive for them. How he has become real and living and fully present in their lives.

Joanna: Who would have thought the resurrection story would continue to be told and continue to be as real today for so many as it was for us so long ago.

Mary: An idle tale …or a witness to truth…

Joanna: Indeed…what’s your resurrection story (to the congregation)?

Amen.

 My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

Good Friday meditation April 19, 2019 Community Worship Seven Last Words of Jesus

 influenced by the words from Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery from his Good Friday sermon preached at Duke Chapel 2013

Ø  My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?     Mark 15:34

On this Good Friday, the day we face the truth about death, we are stunned by the words of Jesus as he ends his life with a cry out to God.

A cry of abandonment.

A cry of giving up.

A cry of rejection.

A cry of dismissal.

A cry of torment.

A cry of powerlessness.

A cry of desertion.

A cry of forsaken.

We look to Jesus and yell back at him, ‘what’s up with you?!’

You’re supposed to be the God of power for me.

You’re supposed to be the God of energy;

the God of wonder;

the God of ‘I can do anything’;

the God of miracles.

What’s up with you Jesus, get down off that cross and come help me, come save me now!

Yet, Jesus keeps hanging there.

He keeps dying.

He keeps on calling out to his Father.

He bleeds.

He bleeds a lot.

We don’t like blood.

It scares us and makes some of us faint.

We don’t like to look at it and we certainly don’t like to sing about it.

We feel like if we sing about the blood of Jesus we’ll forget about the love of Jesus.

  

We think if we sing about the blood of Jesus we are only thinking that it is his blood that saves us. And being good theological students we know better than to focus just on one part of Jesus. We really, really don’t want to get ourselves up in arms with our church members by singing dirgy and sad and somber and bloody hymns. As good Presbyterians we’ve taken a lot of those bloody hymns out of our hymnbooks.

Bleh, can’t we just sing the peppy songs and skip Good Friday. I mean this day is really so depressing and our faith is happier than that.

And if we really want to grow our churches and bring in more members we need to provide for exciting and energetic entertainment. Right?

But, the one thing we cannot hide is that Jesus did die.

He did die a horrible, bloody, agonizing death.

And the prettier we make it,

the more cleaned up it becomes,

the more we end up worshipping a plastic coated Jesus.

Perhaps, the bobble head Jesus for our car dashboards.

The truth is Jesus cried out.

Jesus screamed.

Jesus yelled.

Jesus howled, shrieked, hollered, wailed, squawked and shrieked.

Folks it wasn’t pretty.

Jesus did what one third of the authors of the Psalms did. He lamented.

Jesus used the very words from Scripture to cry out to God.

He used the words from Psalm 22.

Just as Jesus used the words from Scripture in the desert, now that he is again in the dry and thirsty land of death, he used the words from God to God.

We wonder why his last words were filled with such grief and sadness.

If Jesus is our Lord and we want him to be our joy and we want to let others believe in him as their joy and salvation, how can we justify this lamenting end of life?

We watch him die alone. There on the cross, on Golgotha we watch Jesus forsaken and wonder about the God who forsook us.

On this Good Friday we wonder what we are supposed to do.

And as we watch Jesus cry out we too cry out.

That’s right.

We cry out for our own losses when we thought God was not there.

We cry out for our own death row experiences when we witnessed people die at the hands of others unjustly.

We cry out to God the very words from God, why have you forsaken us?!

Who are the soldiers, the firefighters, the policemen all shot as they sought to save? Shouldn’t we be crying out for them?

Who are the children, the youth, the innocent walking and playing, and doing the things that bring them joy only to be brutally murdered, assaulted, shot down in cold blood, strung up in prison, knocked down in school rooms, destroyed as they seek to grow up? Shouldn’t we be shrieking, yelling, screaming at the top of our lungs to God with the words from God, why have you forsaken them?

Jesus uses his voice to bring power to the word of God one more time.

As he cries out his abandonment, God is right there tearing the curtain of the Temple wide open!

Jesus’ loud cry does two things.

His loud cry makes it clear that there is much in this world that is wrong. He cries out so we too must cry out for all the wrong in this world.

We must use our voices at the top of our lungs to bring down the imperial systems that deny, that dismiss, that diminish God’s people into segregated sections.

Where people are hungry all the time-there is no reason for this.

Where people fight about religious institutions, there is no reason for this.

Where people suffer at the cruelty of others, there is no reason for this.

If we, the people Jesus has called to faith, do not cry out, the stones themselves will-remember those words just last Sunday-how soon we forget.

When we say these things we are told not to preach politics from the pulpit and somehow when we say we must speak up against tyranny or against systems that are unjust, we are told to be quiet because that’s stirring the pot and its not pretty and its unbecoming to a lady preacher…or a gentleman preacher…do not rock the boat we are told.

And what’s worse, we listen,

because we want to keep our flock,

we don’t want to be driven out of our congregations.

We want our members to be happy and entertained by the joyful Jesus.

But, Jesus did cry out on that Good Friday and so should we on this Good Friday.

The second thing that his cry to God brought was the bringing down of the curtain of division.

His cry demolishes the religious order.

His cry crumbles all that was walled up by rules, segregation, inequality, and unites them across the barriers once set.

His loud cry made God accessible to all.

No longer is a priest the way of conversation with God.

No longer is a sacrifice made for forgiveness from God.

No longer is a payment in the treasury needed for sanctification.

God is open to all; for all of us to cry out together Abba, Father!

Today on this Good Friday, we lament, we see the blood, we call on God with the words of God, and we say, ‘we will take the cup of salvation’. Amen

Community Pastors Preaching Good Friday together.