FEAST ON FORGIVENESS

A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter (Year B)

by Pastor Laura Gentry

Luke 24:36b-48

On Easter Sunday—two weeks ago—my husband and I headed to Dubuque after we’d finished our Easter worship duties. We were celebrating the resurrection with my parents. Since it was just the four of us this year, we opted not to make our own feast. Instead, we went out for a fancy buffet. I haven’t been to a buffet in a long time. I’d forgotten how difficult it is to make choices about what to eat at an all-you-can eat banquet. After a while, you get too full to walk and you have to sort of roll yourself out to the parking lot. I remember once I ate so much at a buffet that I announced I was unable to even lick my spoon! Though this year’s Easter banquet was delicious, I ended up thinking how ridiculous it was that we’d eaten quite that much.

Yet now as I continue to study the resurrection scripture lessons through the season of Easter, I am beginning to think our massive Easter banquet was actually appropriate. Why? Because as the gospel of Luke describes it, Easter is not just about the empty tomb, it is about eating. Jesus himself, it seems, spent the first Easter eating.

In the portion before today’s Gospel reading, Jesus makes himself known to two disciples in Emmaus through the breaking of the bread. Now in today’s reading, he demonstrates that he is not a ghost by devouring a piece of fish. His disciples gather around the table too. Like us, they celebrated the resurrection of Jesus by sharing a meal—perhaps they didn’t get a fancy “omelet station” like I did at the Easter buffet I attended, but they had a meal nevertheless.

And it wasn’t their first meal together. We remember, of course, the last supper Jesus and his disciples shared in the upper room the night he was betrayed. At that meal, he assured them that he would be with them in the bread and wine even after he was gone from them in body. No wonder the disciples later recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread at Emmaus—it reminded them of this landmark last supper.

But Jesus had already spent his entire ministry with the disciples, he had already shared countless meals with them and he had already given them the amazing experience of the last supper—a gift that would keep on giving. So why would he need to keep showing up after the resurrection to convince them that he had really risen?

We don’t know Jesus’ motivation for sure but we do know what his post-resurrection appearances accomplished in the disciples. It gave them a deep sense of forgiveness. Remember that according to the gospels, the disciples weren’t there for Jesus in his time of need. Fearing for their lives, they all fled when the Romans came to arrest Jesus. Peter denied him three times even though Jesus warned him he would do so.

They had good reason to feel guilty. They had failed their Lord and Savior. Though he’d spent so much time with them, they were failures when the rubber hit the road. Pathetic might be the best word to describe the followers at the time of the crucifixion and resurrection. But then Jesus comes to them in his resurrected body. He offers them forgiveness and embodies this by eating with them. In Biblical times you would never eat with someone against whom you held a grudge. Eating with them demonstrated that all was well between you. These caring appearances and shared meals utterly transformed the disciples. That must be the reason Jesus came to them.

Now Jesus didn’t appear in body in our modern world. We have no photographs of him or TV interviews and so it would be easy to dismiss the story of the resurrection as fiction. There’s no proof Jesus rose. If you made that argument, you would be right. There is no scientific evidence to prove the Easter story.

What we do have, however, is the convincing evidence that something changed the disciples entirely. They went from a ragtag group of run-aways to the greatest evangelists you can imagine—evangelists who were so zealous to spread the good news that many gave their lives for the cause. Something changed them. We believe it was not something, but someone. It was the loving, forgiving Jesus who came to them and ate with them until they were convinced that their sin was wiped away and they were equipped to carry on the ministry Jesus had begun.

Forgiveness of sins—that’s what Jesus brought to them and to us. That is what he has always been about. Even as he was dying, Jesus asked for forgiveness for those who were killing him (Luke 23:34). In Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in the doubting Thomas story from John’s gospel, he told them that they had the power to forgive sin. Just as God had forgiven them, they were called to forgive the sins of others. This echos the important lesson in the Lord’s Prayer he had already given them: Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Do WE know forgiveness? Do we know it in our hearts—that Jesus rose from the dead for US? For the forgiveness of OUR offenses? Does this give us the inspiration to turn away from our ways of sin and to forgive others as they wrong us? It certainly should.

The German theologian, Karl Rahner, wrote: “we are always tempted to stay in sin because we do not dare to believe in the magnificent love of God, and because we do not want to believe that God will forgive us our sins” (The Content of Faith, p. 306).

We do not dare to believe in the magnificent love of God. How tragic! I remember once when I was a child, a bird flew into our window and injured itself. The neighbors and I ran after the flopping, hurting bird—attempting to capture it so we could get it treatment. We were trying to help, but the bird didn’t want to let us help. It didn’t understand. It was afraid. We were unable to catch it and later found it’s body in the lawn.

When I think about how desperately God wants to love us and how unwilling we are at times to let God love us, I think of that dying bird. We are only hurting ourselves when we attempt to go it alone—pushing against the God who made us and who given his life to redeem us. But it is hard for us to ask for help and to really allow God to love and forgive us. God’s love is foreign to us. No where else do we experience such unconditional love and forgiveness. It is hard to trust in it when others have promised love and then let us down. Yet by the gift of faith, we CAN trust in this love, we CAN accept this forgiveness and we CAN be changed into loving people who offer forgiveness to others.

Jesus love and undeserved forgiveness offered to the disciples in the concrete experience of shared meals changed the denying Peter, the doubting Thomas and the run-away disciples into the heros of faith God designed them to be. Jesus continue to offer this love and forgiveness to us in the Lord’s Super and in the Word. May we also feast on forgiveness that we may be transformed to change the world with God’s love. Amen.


© 2009 Laura E. Gentry

DO YOU WANT YOUR STONE TO BE ROLLED AWAY?

A Sermon for Easter Sunday
March 23, 2008
by Pastor Laura Gentry


Above are the "Alleluia" flags the children distributed to begin our worship service. Every time we said or sang "Alleluia" we waved our flags to show the celebratory nature of our worship.

John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her. (NRSV)


Here we are on Easter Sunday, gathered for our celebratory worship: the sanctuary is decked out in fragrant lilies, we’re in our Easter finery and we’ve got yellow “Alleluia!” flags to wave about excitedly. What could be better? The stone of the grave has been rolled away and Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Ah, but what does it mean for us that Christ is risen? What sort of demands does it make upon us? That’s right: demands. Have you ever thought of the resurrection of Christ as demanding? Yes, it is fun to worship on Easter morning with all the great hymns and scriptures and to down bags full of pastel colored candies and dye eggs but there is more to this message than that. We have to face the reality that Christ is risen, really risen!

Because he is no longer in the tomb, he won’t be quiet. He is not just a fond memory. He is a living presence with whom we can have a relationship. As a resurrected Savior, he’s entitled to his opinions about the way we choose to live our lives. Frankly, he’s concerned about our disinterest in living the resurrected life.

The question he asks us is: do you want your stone to be rolled away? Do you want to be alive with me or would you rather stay in your old, dull, dead-end lifestyle? You see, we tend to like to stay in our graves. It is safer there. There is no challenge, just go through the daily routines and everything will be fine. Do you want your stone to be rolled away? He demands an answer.

Certainly Jesus’ disciples had a difficult time answering that question. They find the tomb empty and struggle to figure out what this unexpected ending means for them. To be honest, it would have been a lot more convenient for them if he had stayed dead. Oh yes, they would miss him and all those great parables he used to tell, the exciting healings he would perform and so on. But in the grave, he couldn’t challenge them to take up their crosses anymore. I mean, they’d already dropped their nets to follow him, what more did he want? In the grave, he couldn’t give them a mission to spread the good news. In the grave, he couldn’t ask them to give up their very lives for this cause. What simple, uneventful lives they could have led if only he’d stayed in the grave.

Now the stone has been rolled away! Now his body is gone and an angel announces that he is risen. What do they do? They should be leaping for joy and holding laughter club meetings to giggle at the devil’s foiled plot. Instead, they respond with fear. “Oh no! What’s going to happen to us now?” they think. “How are we going to take up the challenges, which the risen Jesus lays before us? We had so wanted to be able to retire in comfort and, you know, perhaps write the Gospels with all our newfound free time.” They don’t seem eager to embrace the adventure that is set before them. They kind of liked it before the stone had been rolled away.

As human beings, it is our nature to want stable and predictable lives. We want life to be easygoing and God to always have comfortable messages for us. But that is the life of the grave. That is not what we were designed for. The resurrected Christ has a more exciting plan. He barges into our neatly ordered lives and demands that we drop our nets and follow him. He demands we put down our tv sets and our easy chairs and our notebook computers and anything else that stands in the way of our discipleship. He demands that we follow him, and follow him all the way to the cross. Then he rolls away our stones whether or not we wanted him to. And then he calls us to live the resurrected life with him!

To live the resurrected life means that we come out of our self-inflicted tombs. It demands that we allow the stone to be rolled away. It demands that leave behind our fears. If we truly believe that our Lord has risen from the dead and that in doing so, he has secured our salvation, then there is no room for fear. There is no room for small-minded, go-with-the-flow, be-like-everyone-else, live-a-boring-life thinking! There is NO room for it! We cannot proclaim that Christ is risen and then turn around and shrink in fear that we can’t handle our lives.

Yet so many people live in this perpetual state of fear and anxiety. It’s easy to see why they do it. The news stations broadcast a smorgasbord of tragedy every single day. You can’t even bring a full-size bottle of shampoo on the airplane with you because of the terrorist-fighting restrictions. And who can you trust to love these days? So many broken relationships and broken hearts may cause us to be cautious. Looking around at the state of our world, it is logical to want to sequester ourselves, to hunker down for a safe but boring life in the grave and ask Christ to kindly leave our stones alone. It may not be great, but this is the life we know and we don’t want it disturbed by any risen Saviors.

The ending of the Gospel of Mark is the subject of much scholarly debate. How did the original writer end it? There are actually three possibilities. Each one of the endings is possible and is supported by ancient manuscripts. Yet, the most likely ending is odd. After telling the story of the resurrection, it simply ends with the sentence: “and they were afraid.” And they were afraid? That’s not a very triumphal ending to such an amazing story! Yet it is truthful. That’s how the disciples felt when they first heard the news. Like us, they were afraid of the stone being rolled away.

So Christ asks us on this Easter morning: do you want your stone to be rolled away? Do you want me to infuse you with my resurrection power? Do you want to believe that I am alive and working in you to live the life God plans for you? Do you want to leave the sofa behind and step out into the adventure of resurrected living? Do you want to be overwhelmed with the joy of the Lord, with the peace that passes all understand, with the courage to face life’s fears head-on in faith? You, yes you, are being called forth from your graves. You are being asked to live with Christ, to really live! Let us summon the courage to say YES to these questions, my friends. Let us sing and dance and shout “Alleluia!” not just today but every day, for our stones have been rolled away! Amen.

© 2008 Laura Gentry

A GRACE-FILLED LIFE

A Sermon for The Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 10, 2007
by Pastor Laura Gentry

Luke 7:11-17
Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country. (NRSV)


Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Before this scene in our gospel lesson from Luke, Jesus has healed a highly valued slave of a centurion. But it is the faith of the centurion himself that is most impressive. He believes if Jesus just says the word, his servant will be healed. And sure enough, he was right. Jesus says, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” (Luke 7:9)

Now, Jesus arrives in the town of Nain. As he enters the gates, Jesus notices a funeral procession leaving the town. They are carrying out a dead man. He is the only son of a mother who has already been widowed. Now she has no men to protect her and provide for her financial well-being, as these were the rules of her patriarchal culture. The scripture doesn’t tell us just how devastated this woman is, but given her circumstances, we can be sure she is immeasurably grieved.

A pastor friend of mine officiated at a funeral of a baby that was stillborn. The child’s mother knew from early in her pregnancy that the child would not live, but still she carried the baby for many more months, hoping for a miracle. Alas, when delivery time came, her child emerged into the world fully formed, beautiful, but not alive. At the graveside service, the tiny casket was placed into the hole in the earth because it was too small to sit on top like they do with adult-sized caskets. The mother was so overwhelmed with grief, that she jumped into the hole to embrace the casket of her tiny child once more. It was a devastating moment for everyone. Sometimes grief is just too horrible to even witness.

So it must have been for the mother of this adult child in Nain. Then, along comes Jesus. He sees the mother’s intense grief and he says to her, “Do not weep.” How can she not weep? It almost seems like he is mocking her pain.

But then he moves toward the dead body and he says, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” (Luke 7:14) The dead man sits up and begins to speak. Resurrection! Before everyone’s eyes.

I have always wanted to witness something like that, haven’t you? I remember when I was a child, one of the first visitations I went to was for an elderly woman named Mrs. Zurcher. She was a dear friend of our family. I was somewhere around third grade when she died and as I stood before her casket, I just could not believe Mrs. Zurcher was gone. She looked so lifelike. I was absolutely determined that if I watched closely enough, I would see her chest rise and fall. I kept a close eye on her throughout the time we were at the visitation because I had concocted an elaborate fantasy that she would suddenly open her eyes and begin to speak to us, saying something like, “Oh for Pete’s sake, dry your eyes everyone! I’m not dead anymore.”

Knowing how much I wanted Mrs. Zurcher to reawaken from her slumber of death, I have a sense of how relieved and amazed the people of Nain must have been when the man was resurrected. How surprising! How amazing! What a miracle! I don’t even think they could have put into words what they were feeling in that moment.

Let’s think for a moment how different this healing story is from the one just before it. In that instance, the centurion dazzled Jesus with his great faith in his request to have the servant healed of his illness. Here, the woman is minding her own business, going along with the funeral procession of her son. She doesn’t ask Jesus to heal him, she doesn’t demonstrate any faith. We don’t even know if she harbors the hope of her son waking up as I did with Mrs. Zurcher. Maybe she’d like Jesus’ help very much but she doesn’t feel worthy to ask for it. We have no idea what was going on in her head. All we know is that her only son has died and she is weeping.

Unlike the centurion, the mother has demonstrated no faith—at least none that the gospel writer saw fit to mention. And when her son is raised, there is no report that she even thanked him.

So, it doesn’t seem to me that this story is about faith. It doesn’t even seem to be about gratitude, though both of these things are wonderful. No, I think what Luke is trying to teach us by including this miracle story is that our God, as demonstrated by Jesus Christ, is a God of grace. Grace—the unearned, unwarranted, unbelievably lavished-upon-us love of God—comes to us not because we are faith-filled or particularly thankful but because God is good, because God simply wants to love us. The resurrection in the story doesn't happen because of a mother's strong belief. It happens because Jesus has compassion for her. This story is not about the woman or her son, but about the amazing compassion and grace Jesus offers. The point is that when grace comes into our lives, it requires nothing of us but to receive it.

How have you experienced grace? In my years in ministry, I have heard some pretty remarkable grace stories. Some people have beat cancer or other life-threatening illnesses. Others have even been pronounced dead and seen the light and heard God’s voice and then been brought back to life—to have a second chance. Some people have come out of a deep depression to find joy and wholeness. Some have found reconciliation in a relationship they thought was entirely over. Still others have found the strength to move on with their lives after a tragic loss. And a great many haven’t had anything dramatic happen, but they have experienced the grace of knowing Christ as a Savior who walks with them throughout their lives.

You see, this story teaches us that God’s grace is all around us at each and every moment. That we are alive is itself a miracle, a gift of God. We cannot do anything to make God love us any less because God is just that loving. God is a God who zealously seeks out and snatches up the lost sheep. And so grace is not just some abstract concept, some idea we like to toy around with in the church. It is a concrete reality. It brings life out of death. It brings hope to the hopeless. It forgives the unforgivable. It promises us eternal life with God. And it has to power to so transform us, that we can offer grace to others as a natural outpouring of the delightful grace in our own hearts.

In this season of Pentecost, we focus upon the Holy Spirit—how it is at work within our lives and how it seeks to develop deeper, more substantial faith in us. And today, as we witness the miracle of grace in our gospel story and we are invited to ponder anew the amazing power of grace at work in us. How is grace working in and among us? How completely loved do you feel? And how does this grace compel you to take bold and loving action in the world? May these questions draw us to an even more grace-filled life. Amen.

© Laura E. Gentry 2007

ALIVE & AHEAD OF US

A Sermon for Easter Sunday
April 8, 2007
by Pastor Laura Gentry

John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her. (New Revised Standard Version)

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Risen Lord, Jesus Christ.

In the midst of the early morning darkness, Mary Magdalene makes her way to Jesus’ tomb. She is devastated by his death. She would rather the horrific event of his crucifixion had never happened. Now, all she has are the memories of him and this grave to tend.

And then, a turn of events occurs. The resurrected Jesus appears to her in one of the most devastatingly moving moments of the bible. Her first instinct is joy that he has returned to life. Now things can be like they used to again. His whole death and burial can fade into her memory like nothing more than a bad dream. His body has not been taken to some unknown location, he is here with her. She grabs a hold of him, overjoyed that her life makes sense again. Mary doesn’t even stop to ask questions about how he came back to life or what it all meant, she just clings to him.

But Jesus gently tells her, “Do not hold onto me, for I have not yet ascended.” Do not hold on to me? What does this mean? Jesus returns to her but now she can’t hold onto him. Why is he going on another journey? Hasn’t he had enough journey already?

Jesus is trying to tell his befuddled disciple that things aren’t like before. He has not come back to just pick up where they left off. Now that he has passed from life to death and back to life again, something amazing has happened and things can never be as they were before. Mary wants a nostalgic return to the past, but Jesus wants to lead her into the future.

We are prone to the same attitude about Easter as Mary demonstrated on the first Easter. We love to think about the Easter Sundays of the past. We gather each Spring for Easter worship, but do we gather to celebrate the resurrection or simply to relish in the nostalgia of this holiday—remembering our childhood traditions of Easter: the Easter egg hunts, the new outfits, the chocolate bunnies, the Easter brunch, the family gatherings? We cling to the tradition of Easter rather than the message of Easter. In the end, however, this attitude reduces Easter to nothing more than a Kodak moment, like the resurrected Jesus is just another pleasant picture in the family photo album. This clinging to the past lops off the power of Easter. B.B. Taylor once wrote: “You can’t nail Jesus down. We tried once but he got loose.” Jesus did not spring from the tomb just so we could eat chocolate bunnies!

But we, like Mary, are unsure about the uncertainty of the future Jesus talks about. We’re not sure what he means about going to the Father. We like to cling to the comfort of what we know, rather than the uncertainty of a new life in Christ. We must accept that Jesus is not dead and behind us but he is alive and ahead of us. This is the good of the good news—we no longer have to remain as we are! But because Jesus lives and is going to the Father, we have a chance at finally becoming the people we have been created to be.

If we limit our understanding of Jesus and reduce him to a series of old memories, then we limit his power in our lives. If he can’t be for us the risen Christ, then we cannot benefit from his resurrection. Easter is a time to grow, blossom, advance—to be Easter people.

When I was a child, playing on the banks of the Mississippi, my sister and I used to love dragonfly season. For a couple of days each summer, ugly prehistoric looking bugs clumsily trudge out of the river. They perch on a rock or a wall and then their backs begin the bulge like some monster in a science fiction movie. And then, suddenly, a big-eyed dragonfly face pops out. In a little bit, its wings unfurl and it pulls itself the rest of the way out of the old shell and flies away. Big, beautiful, dramatic dragon flies come out of goofy looking bugs! You can hardly believe it unless you see it for yourself. And the shell they leave behind looks just like their old selves, except that it is hollow and can be crumbled in your fingers.

As I think about being an Easter person, I am reminded of the metamorphosis of the dragonfly. While, we long to cling to the old shells of our lives, of the people we used to be, Christ compels us to be the transformed dragonflies. He wants us to be free and joyful and filled with new life.

To be Easter people means that our lives can no longer be business as usual. We must throw our lives into the hands of our resurrected Savior. We must have the courage of Mary who followed her Lord’s command to go and tell the others, the share the good news that Jesus is alive and will always be alive. Jesus is not dead and behind us, he is alive and ahead of us—freeing us to be all that we were created to be. He is leading us into an unknown, but marvelous future. If we must cling, let us cling not to things that are fleeting but to the power of the resurrection and our own new lives!

Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

© Laura E. Gentry 2007