May 8, 2016 - 7th Sunday in Easter - Making God Known

May 1, 2016 - 6th Sunday in Easter - Letting Jesus be our Peace - The Rev. Bingham Powell

April 24, 2016 - 5th Sunday in Easter - The Rev. Bingham Powell

April 17, 2016 - 4th Sunday in Easter - Shepherd Sunday

Photo by Ppvanderlee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30692309

April 10, 2016 - 3rd Sunday in Easter - By the Charcoal Fire

I know that we are here on the Third Sunday in Easter, but I am hoping you would indulge me for a moment and go back in time a bit with me. I want us to go back a few weeks to Holy Week. Imagine with me that last night of Jesus' life before he was crucified. The meal he shared with his disciples. The foot washing. The bread. The wine. Judas rushing off to betray him. Jesus giving his new commandment that they love one another as he has loved them. Jesus telling Peter that Peter would deny him three times before morning. Jesus taking a few of his disciples with him across the Kidron Valley to the Garden of Gethsemane up on the Mount of Olives. Jesus praying there. The disciples falling asleep. The back and forth. Jesus in agony. Asking God to let the cup pass from his lips. But not my will be done, but yours, O God. Judas coming. Betraying Jesus with a kiss. The arrest. Peter and the Beloved disciple following as the soldiers took Jesus away, but at a bit of a distance. Do you remember all of this? Can you step away from the Easter joy and get your mind back into that Holy Week mindset with the darkness and the fear and the sorrow and the confusion?

The soldiers at this point would have taken Jesus back across the Kidron Valley to the house of Annas. And there, Jesus goes in, held prisoner. Perhaps there might have even been a prison cell there. The Beloved Disciple knows some of the guards, so he gets himself and Peter into the gate, a little bit closer, into the courtyard, but still, they are keeping some distance. It's late, late at night. On the threshold of morning really. Nights can be chilly in Jerusalem, especially in early Spring. And so, the servants and the guards, the police, they make a fire there in the courtyard: a charcoal fire more precisely, at least in John’s telling of the story. The word here in John's version is not the standard word for fire, which is pyr, a word used 71 times in the New Testament, and is used by both Mark and Luke when they are telling this part of the story. Rather John uses a very specific word, anthrakia, meaning a fire made with charcoal, and it is rare, only used twice in the New Testament (with a derivative of it being used once by Paul). This all may seem a bit detailed, a bit off track, but hold with me. So by this charcoal fire, by the anthrakia, Peter is asked if he is one of Jesus' followers. And Peter, denies it. And a second time. And a third time. Just as Jesus had said. Peter, you will deny me three times before the cock crows. And then the cock crows. Peter has denied Jesus three times, his master, his teacher, the one he loved and the one who loved him. Peter has denied the one whom he had confessed as the Messiah, the one he had confessed as the Son of God. Peter has denied the one for whom he had said he was willing to die. By this charcoal fire, he has denied Jesus three times.

So, come back with me now to today's Gospel. Also taking place in a similar time of day, at that moment between night and day, that sort of moment when a rooster crows to usher in the sun And again, we have a an anthrakia, a charcoal fire, the only other time this word is used in the New Testament. John is a highly symbolic writer; the odds that this is just coincidence is nearly zero. John is using this charcoal fire to link these two stories together. And again we find Peter by the charcoal fire. But this time Jesus feeds him by this fire. And three times, Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. Once for each of the three denials. The three-fold denial is met with the three-fold restoration. By the charcoal fire, in the early morning, Jesus restores Peter. In mercy, in grace, in love, Jesus undoes the horrible thing that Peter had done by betraying him. And he invites Peter to follow him all over again.  

This is what the resurrection accomplishes. This is Easter. In Christ, through Christ, by Christ, we are restored. We are brought back into the fullness of relationship with God. And it is done through love. Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? Is the restorative question that Jesus asks. This connection to Maundy Thursday that the charcoal fire and the three-fold denial and restoration invoke, Should also remind us also of Jesus' new commandment that he gave at the last supper, that they love one another as he has loved them, that we love one another as he has loved us. Love. It really all comes down to love. God's love for us. Our love for God. Our love for each other. It's all intertwined. And of course it is when we think about it. For God is love as we later learn in the First Letter of John. And we, who were made in God's image, as we learn in first chapter of Genesis, the first chapter of the first book of our Scripture, can only be who we truly are, who we were made to be, when we acting in that love, living in that love, when we are dwelling in that love. And so to restore Peter, it has to be about restoring that love. Jesus has to ask, Do you love me? And Peter has to say, yes, of course, I do.

The question for us today is: What part of us is needing to be restored? In what ways are we disconnected, from God, from each other, from ourselves, internally disconnected from who we are, who God made us to be? How have we denied Christ in our lives and in this world? How do we need to love and to be loved? I don't have answers to these questions. These are the questions that each one of us has to ask for ourselves. These are the questions with which each one of us has to sit and maybe wrestle and struggle. This is the deep interior work that we need to do. It's not easy, but it is the work we have to do if we want find that restoration. We have to recognize how we ourselves are like Peter by the charcoal fire of Holy Week - a people who succumb to fear and anxiety and darkness and confusion, a people who have some of those elements in our lives. And then we have to recognize how Jesus is inviting us by the charcoal fire of Easter, by the Paschal light, into a full, restored, life-giving relationship of love. It is not easy, but the work is good and transformative and ultimately joyful as we walk the Easter journey. Amen. 

April 3, 2016 - 2nd Sunday in Easter - The Theology of Showing Up

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Isn't it great to cry out our Alleluias again? Easter is this wonderful, celebratory time. It's the most celebratory time of the year for us as Christians. Now, I know what you are thinking, "What about Christmas?" Remember: Christmas is only 12 days long; we get 50 whole days of Easter. 50 days. So, when you see that half-off candy at the grocery store, buy it! It’s still Easter! And the candy is still tasty! And completely liturgically appropriate to enjoy it because we have 43 days of Easter left.

But oddly enough, our joyful celebration does not parallel or mirror the experience of the disciples on the first Easter. They were not yet shouting or singing Alleluia. They were not yet excited about what had happened. We heard that reality last week in Gospel reading when we heard of Mary Magdalene sad and confused when she found the tomb empty. She was the first to encounter Jesus raised from the dead, and she became the Apostle to the Apostles because Jesus commissioned her to tell the others, but they didn't believe her. Luke says that they considered it an idle tale. I suspect we can all read between the lines on what that is supposed to mean. And we again hear of disciples not yet filled with Easter joy in our Gospel today when we find them huddled together in fear, fear that is so counter to the Good News of resurrection, of Easter. Fear that isn't resolved even after they first encountered Jesus risen, for we find them again locking themselves in a week later.

I would like to think that they weren't yet filled with joy because they are still trying to figure it all out, but if we are honest with ourselves, aren't we still trying to figure it all out, too? Do we really recognize that much better than Mary when Jesus is in our midst? Do we really have that much less fear than the other disciples even though we, too, have seen the vanquishing of death? We really aren't that much different than those early disciples. Many of us still find the resurrection something that raises as many questions as it answers. Many of us still have difficulty seeing Jesus, even when he is right in front of us, in a stranger, in a child, in bread, in wine. Many of us still lock ourselves into rooms out of fear. Many of us still find ourselves, from time to time at least, asking God if we couldn't just have a little more clarity, couldn't just see a little more concretely. We are not that much different from the first disciples. We are quite similar, in fact, to Mary and Peter and John and Thomas, and the rest of the gang.

But the one thing that we have figured out is that this resurrection, Jesus' resurrection, is a good thing, a joyful thing, a thing that draws out our Alleluias. Through the generations, Christians have found their joy in Christ's resurrection… even as they were still are trying to figure it all out; even as we are still trying to figure it all out. That is what the Thomas story so importantly teaches us. We can take the time to figure it out. We can still have questions and doubts and faith at the same time. We just have to keep showing up and trying.

Thomas' questions, doubts, fears, didn't keep him from showing up to that room with the other disciples. It was his very questions that drew him in. And it was in that showing up that he encountered Jesus. One of the details that I love about this story is that Thomas didn't even do what he said he had to do in order to believe. He said that he would have to put his finger in the mark of the nails and his hand in the side. But when Jesus offered just that, the story doesn't say that he took Jesus up on the offer. Carvaggio got it wrong in the painting! Instead, Thomas simply blurted out "My Lord and My God." The offer was sufficient. He didn't have to experience what he thought he had to experience. But even that required showing up, to be there in the room with the other disciples, to be there with the other folks who were all just trying to figure it out.

90% of life is showing up, the old saying goes. And that is about right. We gotta keep showing up.  Showing up when we have doubts and when we don't. Showing up when we are confident and when we are afraid. Showing up when we are sorrowful and when we are filled with joy. I call this the Theology of Showing Up. It’s not the most intellectually rigorous of theologies. It is quite simple, but also quite important. We have to keep showing up like Thomas. Not because we have it all figured out, but precisely because we don't. Not in spite of our questions, but because of our questions. For in showing up, we can encounter Jesus. This is good news. This is very good news. This is joyful news. We can encounter Jesus. Like Mary, like the other disciples. If we just keep showing up. Showing up to the tomb, to life's death, where we can find Christ raised. Showing up to the locked room, to life's fear and anxiety, where we can receive Christ’s Peace.  Showing up to the table, to life's hunger where we can be nourished by Christ's Body. My friends in Christ: Just keep showing up. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!