We've Heard It Before

The Readings for the Easter Day can be found here.

Easter Day – Year A

April 20, 2014

The Rev. Christopher Caddell

A few years back I spent my summer as a chaplain in a medium-sized nursing home in the middle of rural Tennessee.  It’s the summer that every first-year seminarian looks forward to with grand ideas of ministry outside the bounds of academic rigor, but it is also the summer everyone dreads because of the intense emotional toll it takes to be a chaplain in a health care setting.

For the first few weeks, I would go by rooms, introduce myself, spend some time talking, praying, holding hands.  I learned quickly there were to be good days and bad.  Some patients welcomed me, others were ambivalent, and still others were not at all interested, even hostile.  Depending on the day, any one patient could fall anywhere on that spectrum.

I still remember the day I met Amy.

Amy was delightful. She was cheery, upbeat, and seemed to be very interested in visiting with me.  I learned about her family, where she grew up, what she had done in life, how old her kids were, the names and ages of her grand children . . . On and on, I heard about Amy’s life. 

Then she started to ask about me.  When I told her that I was in seminary training to be an Episcopal priest, she said, “well I’m an Episcopalian.”

We talked about the church and what she loved about the liturgy.  We talked about my diocese and my bishops.  I told her what brought me to seminary, and how I looked forward to going home to my diocese to begin a new ministry there.

As our conversation came to a close, I prayed with her, and before I left, I asked if I could come back the next day and pray Morning Prayer with her.  She said that she would delight in that and look forward to it.

The next morning I arrived and headed straight for the dining room where we agreed to meet. When I got there, I couldn’t find Amy.  I waited for a moment, and then decided to go look for her.  I finally found her sitting in her room.

“Amy?,” I said.  “It’s me, Chris. We met yesterday, remember?  Do you still want to read Morning Prayer with me?”

She looked at me, a little puzzled, and nodded.

So I pulled up a chair beside her and began Morning Prayer.

I still remember the reading from that day.  It was from Matthew.  You know the story.  Jesus is teaching his disciples about the kingdom of heaven and he compares the kingdom to the vineyard owner who goes out to hire laborers for the harvest – he hires early in the morning, then again at midday, and again in the late afternoon.

About half-way through the reading, Amy stops me and with a little frustration and even some hostility in her voice looks at me and says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I’ve heard this one before.” Then she proceeded to roll her wheelchair out of the room and left me sitting there holding my bible.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I’ve heard this one before.”

I wonder how many of us, once again, on hearing the story of the empty tomb, found ourselves saying that in one sense or another.  Of course, none of us would really say it in this setting, or I hope you wouldn’t.  I’m thankful that none of you walked out after hearing the gospel, leaving the church empty.  But I still wonder that if somewhere deep down inside we hear the story and think, even if it is for a very brief moment, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I’ve heard it before.’

Our familiarity with the Easter story can, ironically, strip the awe and wonder of what happens to be the central and most important claim of the Christian faith.  Without Easter, without the empty tomb, all that comes before can only be described as tragic and without meaning.  But just like reading a mystery novel for the second time, without the element of surprise, something is lost.

Yet what God did is the surprise ending.  No matter how familiar we become with this story, the basic fact is that God acted in a way that was unexpected, seemingly impossible, and in a place where all hope was lost.

There’s more.  In the weeks and years to come, the apostles began to see the resurrection not only as the surprise ending to the death of Jesus, but also the very way that God was working in their lives.  Things did not end with the empty tomb.  It was rather, quite the opposite.  Things began with the empty tomb.  Resurrection was not just the way God had worked that first Easter day, but the way God was working in their lives, here and now.

Their message was not because Jesus was raised from the dead, they would go to heaven.  Instead, their message was because Jesus was raised from the dead, they too have been raised to new life with Christ – not at some distant point in the future, but here, now, today.

The empty tomb was not something just to be witnessed, but also something experienced.   This is the new creation.  This is the way God acts.  This is the way God brings forth new life.

And just like that first Easter morning, it’s surprising.  It’s unexpected.  And it often happens in places where resurrection seems impossible and all hope is lost.

It is interesting to note that John does not say why Mary Magdalene went back to the tomb.  We tend to merge the stories and think that she had gone back to finish burying Jesus properly, but that comes from Luke and Mark.  In John’s gospel, Jesus has already received a proper burial – Joseph of Aramathea and Nicodemus had seen to that.  What makes Mary goes back to the tomb is unknown.

I like to think it was that in her grief, there was no place she would rather be.  She didn’t want to move on.  She didn’t want hide from the tragedy. 

Whatever the case, it was her choosing to be present in the place of deepest pain that made her the first to witness the empty tomb.  She saw resurrection because she placed herself in and opened herself up to the place where God was most likely to act.

I think the piece of us that says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I’ve heard that before,” is the piece that doesn’t know resurrection.  It’s the piece that isn’t looking for God’s activity in our lives.  It’s the piece that tries to say, “Everything is fine.  I can do this on my own.  God couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything anyway.”  It’s the piece that doesn’t want to linger in those dark places.

But resurrection doesn’t happen in the middle of the beautiful city of Jerusalem, but rather on a hill overlooking the trash heap, where all hope is lost, and where death is all that can be seen.

There is another piece of us that knows this story to be true.  There’s a piece that remembers when we thought all hope was lost and were given new life.  A piece that remembers a time when we thought we would drown in our tears and were surprised to find joy again.  A piece that said tragedy and death has the final say, but found that to be a lie.

The truth is, to hear the story of the resurrection is to hear our story.  It is a reminder that it is our story that is being recounted to us. This is how God works again and again, surprising us in our darkest moments, lifting us up from the depths of despair, and raising us to new life.

Remember that story.  Remember that Jesus lives!  Remember that in him, we are raised to new life.  And remember that resurrection is not something that happened but something that happens, here, now, today, in my life and in yours.  Amen.

Where do you stand?

The texts for Palm Sunday can be found by clicking here.

Palm Sunday

April 13, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

There is no getting around it.  

Of all the Sundays in the church year, today’s service is the most full service that we experience all year long.  From the blessing of the palms, to the procession, to the reading of the Passion, there is so much going on here that it is hard to take it all in.

Perhaps that is not an accident, and is rather by design.  We are, after all, entering into the most full week of the church’s year.  It is the one week of the entire year that is set apart – rightly named Holy Week – and it is the week in which we are expected to gather each day of the week for worship, prayer, and contemplation of the acts that surround Jesus’ passion, death, and burial.  Participating in this week prepares our hearts and minds for the resurrection and the fullness of joy that comes with Easter.

But we are not there yet, and Palm Sunday greets us with an invitation to jump in to the deep end of the pool, to be completely immersed in the week that is to come without placing our feet on the bottom, and waiting until that first Easter Eucharist to proclaim “He is risen.”

With all its fullness, Palm Sunday is not simply an invitation to begin Holy Week.  It stands on its own andflooding our senses with a series of images and words that overwhelm our emotions.  It is hard not to get caught up in the drama of what is happening in this service.

The excitement that surrounds Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is palpable.  Crowds line the streets.  Cloaks and palm branches are laid down in front of Jesus as he enters the city.  The noise of the crowd is deafening.

But in less than a week, that energy will turn.  

The shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David” fade away as the picture becomes more clear.  This Messiah, this Jesus does not seem to be concerned at all with the Roman occupation, but rather with his own people.  Instead of marching to the governor’s headquarters, he goes straight to the Temple. This Messiah is not at all like David.  This is not a military leader who will drive out foreign occupation and unite the tribes of Israel under one kingdom.

This is a Messiah who is there to challenge his own people.  

A confrontation in the Temple.  

A plot is hatched.  

A late night arrest and a hasty trial.

Friends and disciples run for their lives.  

Others who were on the fence stand back and watch.

The cries of “Hosanna, save us, son of David,” give way to “Crucify him!” – Get rid of him.  We have no use for him.  

It is not enough just to drive him out; he must be dealt with once and for all.  And so to show what happens to those who challenge authority, who challenge the status quo, he is humiliated, beaten, and given the worst possible means of death.

What began with a triumphal entry into the city seems to end with the body of Jesus being sealed inside the tomb.

For those who have been engaged in the Adult Education class over the past four weeks, you know that the question that has been raised again and again by this trial narrative is “Where do you stand in the midst of this?”

Of course, our first reaction is that of the disciples around the table at the last supper.  “Surely not I, Lord!”

I would not do this.

If I had been there,

I would not have been one to desert him.  

I would not have betrayed.

I would not have denied.

I would not have yelled, “Crucify him.”

And yet, when it comes to us shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David,” or to put it more in terms that we use today, “Help me, God,” our answer is not quite so emphatic.

When our salvation seems to require something of us,

When it requires that we change,

When it challenges our ideas of what salvation looks like,

Or when it opens the possibility that God’s promises do not necessarily mean that we are comfortable and content or without hardship or suffering,

And worst of all, when it seems that our salvation is intimately tied to walking the way of the cross with Jesus, dying to the self, so that new life can be brought forth,

When the events that we have just experienced call forth a change in us, then that “Surely not I, Lord” does not have the same force or conviction.  When Jesus’ presence challenges who I am (or who I perceive myself to be) then it is all to easy to move away from him and to join the with anyone else in this narrative.

The invitation of this day, indeed all of Holy Week, is to enter into the trial and death of Jesus asking ourselves, “Where do I stand?”

Do I choose to stand with Jesus, or do I choose to stand with where I am comfortable, unchallenged, and unchanged?

Will I choose God’s vision for me, or simply accept the normative vision that the world gives? – this is power, this is authority, this is who I am in that system.

One thing is sure, choosing the latter moves us no closer to that salvation that we so deeply long for.

Standing with Jesus at his trial is the place where we learn both who Jesus is and who we are, and it brings us into contact with a God whose imagination is much broader than our own, whose ideas for His creation are much bigger than what we could ever imagine, whose plan for salvation might be much different than we ever expected.

The fullness of this day and week are an invitation.  And it is one worth taking.  It is one that opens us to the possibility of new life, life that is lived in abundance now and eternal.  But it requires that we stand with Jesus first.

May the fullness of this day and of the week to come be a blessing – not a comfort, but a blessing – in helping you move closer to Jesus, the Messiah, the one who chooses to save us with God’s vision and not our own.

Amen.

So that ...

The readings for the Fourth Sunday in Lent can be found here.

Lent 4A

March 30, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

This morning’s gospel contains one of those passages that goes on my list of things that I hope Jesus didn’t say exactly like gospel writers recorded it.

“He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

It sounds like something we might say when we are faced with unexplainable tragedy.  To say that a man was born blind so that God could be seen in him is in the realm of “Everything happens for a reason,” or “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

Of course, the problem with these statements is that it places God in the active role of causing suffering. 

In the case of the man in this story, that suffering is life-long. 

Having been born blind, the question that the disciples asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents,” would have been his constant companion for his entire life. 

Who is at fault?

Why did this happen?

What did I do to deserve this?

His parents would have asked these questions.  Friends and family probably went home from a visit wondering the same things.  Strangers on the street might even point and stare, and either audibly or in their minds taken a position one way or another.  Even the disciples with genuine desire to understand the nature of loss and suffering, ask Jesus to weigh in on the topic.

This man’s entire life would have revolved around that question.

Then there’s the realities of the life he lived.  It’s a life that in his context would have been little more than just an existence.  Unable to see he would not have been able to provide for himself. 

His parents would have cared for him when he was young, but even that has its limits. Whether it was by choice or not, this man would eventually find himself without that support and have to find a new way to survive, and in his world begging was the normal way to carry on.

The stares, the judgments, the hardships, the questions…

All of this, so that God’s glory might be revealed.

It might be helpful to know that those words – so that – are hotly debated in the world of biblical studies.   While some want to stick to the literal cause and effect translation of Jesus’ words, many scholars tell us there is something lost in the translation.

Rather than offering an explanation to the disciples’ question, Jesus offers them an example of how God works.

Eugene Peterson translates that part of the conversation in The Message this way,

Jesus said, “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do.

In other words, simply because this man was born blind, God’s glory will be revealed.

Once we begin to understand it in that way this story opens up for us in ways like never before.

Here is a man that everyone assumes is beyond God’s grace, a man in whom God has abandoned.  He is a man who – either by the fault of others or by his own doing – has caused this.

And whatever conclusion you come to there, it is a man who is outside, on the fringes of society.  He is swept to the side, goes mostly unnoticed, with the preference that he would remain unseen or simply go away.

He is someone who has no voice, no power to change his circumstances, and probably has no expectation that anything will ever change.

This man and his life is the last place that you would look if your were wanting to see “God’s works revealed.”

And yet, this is where God chooses to act – in a blind man, isolated from the rest of the world, completely helpless, and without hope.

Simply because this man was born blind, God’s works are revealed in him. 

To give you a preview of this morning’s adult education class – this is the theme in which Rowan Williams will challenge us to consider.  God’s works, God’s transcendent reality is most evident in the outsider. 

God is present in and with those who do not have a voice, in and with those without power to affect their world, and in in and with those who believe they have lost any right the might have had in the world. 

Williams pushes us further.

It is in these persons, those whose place we cannot guarantee, whose welfare we cannot secure, who do not fit with the world around us – these are the persons who remind us of our own limits.

The reason that we sweep outsiders out of view is because in them we are reminded of our own poverty, our own blindness, our own inability to control our situation. 

Yet it is here that we meet God most powerfully, most evidently.

At the 10:30 service, we will sing “Just as I am.”  It is one of the Christian world’s favorite hymns.  It’s in almost every hymnal and if you find an album of Christian hymnody there is likely going to be a track that includes “Just as I am.”

It was also one of my professor’s least favorite hymns.  He always said people sing it as if the words were “Just as I am, because I’m not gonna’ change.”

That is, of course, not what the hymn says. 

Just as I am,

poor, wretched, blind;

sight, riches, healing of the mind,

yea, all I need, in thee to find,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

We come to God with the recognition that within us there is a bit of an outsider.  There are those places where we feel we have no voice, no power to change the circumstances of our lives, no hope for the future.  We bring all of that with us and carry it every single day.

And yet, in that is the good news.  Those are the places where God is most likely to be found.  Those are the places where transformation happens.  Those are the places where God seeks to heal.

May that be the prayer for us this day – that we come, just as we are, especially those parts of us that are blind, so that God’s works may be revealed in us.  Amen.

Jesus and the Mundane

For this Sunday's readings, click here.

Lent 3A

March 23, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

I spent spring break of my sophomore year in college just outside the entrance to Big Bend National Park.  I had planned to stay with my best-friend inside the park, but little did we know, if you want to stay at Big Bend National park during spring break, you reservations are a must..

My friend was at Tech and I was at A&M and it seemed like a perfect place to spend a week together, so we had been planning it for months. We thought we had everything covered – a tent, sleeping bags, food.  What else could we need?

Looking back on it, we were probably as ignorant as the Park Ranger who we met at the gate thought we were.

That park ranger, perhaps seeing the disappointment on our faces, told us about a place just down the road that might have some room for us to pitch our tent. 

Relieved that he did have room, we got our tent up with the help of our truck’s headlights and fell asleep, exhausted.

The next morning brought with it the revelation that we had not actually found a park, but rather a large ranch and a rancher who was willing to take our money in exchange for a place to be. 

There were no toilets, no campsites, no water.  Just a vast open plain.  Instead of being able to stay inside the park where there were campsites with bathrooms and a few basic necessities, we were twenty miles outside of the main gate. 

And as the day got hotter, one more thing became clear – we did not bring enough water.

This trip that we thought we had planned so well became an exercise in hauling drinking water.  The closest source that we could find was inside the park, and we soon found that we were making multiple trips per day just to keep the far-too-small igloo jug that we brought with us full.

We got some hiking in, but every time we went to another section of the park, our first question was, “Where’s the water?”

Driving back home from that trip we realized that we had spent far more time finding and collecting water than we ever spent enjoying the beauty of the park.

Water, when you do not have it readily available or in abundance, is something that can consume you.

I can imagine the path between the Samaritan woman’s house and that well is well worn.  It’s a daily trip; probably more than one trip per day. 

Day after day, week after week, month after month.  A never ending cycle of trips to the well for this most precious and needed resource.

I would bet she could make that trip with her eyes closed.  Perhaps she even knew how many steps lie between here and there.  108 paces out the front door, then left, then a sharp right ….

And then there was the hard task of drawing that water and lugging the full jugs back to the house.

Drawing a daily supply of water was a never-ending, yet always necessary, mundane task.

And yet, on this day, that mundane task is going to be interrupted by what appears to be nothing more than a man wanting a drink of water.

On the one hand, our world and the world of this Samaritan woman are so very far apart.  There are so many things going on in this story that to our eyes and ears make little sense, but would have resonated loudly with first-century Palestinians. 

A man speaking to a woman in public.

A Jew asking a Samaritan for a drink of water.

And a conversation about marriage.

This is the point where we have been told that this conversation between Jesus and this Samaritan woman is about morality.  When Jesus tells her to go and bring her husband back, the woman admits that she has no husband, and Jesus says, “Right, you’ve had five.”

What happens next is a shift in the conversation. Where we might expect the woman to fall to her knees and ask for forgiveness, we find the woman, instead engaging in a conversation with Jesus about worship.

We have worshiped here for generations, but you say God must be worshiped in Jerusalem.

Therein lies the debate between Samaritans and Jews.  Since the time of King David’s grandson, these two peoples have been at odds over the proper place to meet God. 

They were once one family, one kingdom – the twelve tribes of Israel united under one God.

But a united family would only last for two generations.  Unwilling to accept David’s grandson as king, ten tribes form the northern kingdom of Israel, while the remaining two form the southern kingdom of Judah. 

By the time Jesus is talking to this woman at the well, this split is nearly 1000 years old. 

But northern kingdom of Israel did not fare as well or last as long as the southern.  Just two hundred years in, Assyria conquers the northern kingdom and disperses the native population throughout its empire.  In turn Assyria settles the northern kingdom with five other peoples –

The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim and settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites. They took over Samaria and lived in its towns.[1]

What happens next is exactly what the Assyrians want – mixing of the population. 

This is what the Samaritan woman and Jesus know that we do not, and this is what moves their conversation from water to worship, and from worship to hope.

The messianic hope for this woman, indeed for all of the Israelites of the time, is that the Messiah would come, restore the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and rule a great kingdom, once again united as it was with King David.

He cannot be the Messiah, can he?

Of course, Jesus does not turn out to be the messiah that this woman or anyone else expected.  God does not act in predictable ways.

To use a phrase from Rowan Williams that has come up in our class – God appears as something unfolding and unpredictable in the passage of time.

We may be worlds apart from this Samaritan woman, but we have much more in common than we might think.

Days and weeks that can be driven by routine and mundane tasks.

A life in which we are not necessarily expecting to find God in those tasks.

A worldview that says God (if he can be found at all) can only be found here or there, on this day, but not on that.

The world of the Samaritan woman is our own. 

We come with her to our daily and mundane tasks of drawing water from the well never expecting to find the messiah sitting there waiting for us. 

Where do you find God in the daily routine of your life? 

What does the messiah have to say to you when you come to the well?

Do you take the time to allow that conversation to develop or do you just move on with the task at hand? 

What does it look like in your life for God to interrupt what you are doing and to transform your understanding, to move you from a place of monotony or despair to a place of hope?

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[1] 2 Kings 17:24