The Altar of Our Hearts

Holy Saturday, March 31, 2018

Jim Melnyk: “The Altar of Our Hearts”

Those of you who were with me in Sunday School last week heard and read the quote from theologian and author Howard Thurman entitled, “The Inward Sea.”  The passage will be in this month’s newsletter as well.

Thurman writes, “There is in every person an inward sea, and in that sea there is an island, and on that island there is an altar, and standing guard before that altar is the ‘angel with the flaming sword.’ Nothing can get by that angel to be placed on that altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority.  Nothing passes ‘the angel with the flaming sword’ to be placed upon your altar unless it be a part of ‘the fluid grace of your consent.’ This is your crucial link with the Eternal.”

Holy Saturday challenges us to consider both our inward sea and altar that stands on the island in the midst of the sea – what I choose to call the altar of our hearts.  At the dawning of this day we are called to imagine our Lord’s body at rest in the depths of a stone-cold tomb.  We cannot forget how we came to this place.  Maundy Thursday beginning with “This is my body, this is my blood,” and ending with “I do not know the man!”  Good Friday with all of its violence and fear – with darkened skies and thunderous earthquakes – with tears of anguish and with heart-crushing sorrow.  Oh, how our inward seas tossed with mountainous waves and pounding surf!  Cries of “Crucify! Crucify!”  Cries of “My God, my God – why have you forsaken me?” and the almost-whispered, “It is finished!”  A tempest-tossed inward sea that threatened to pull the island of our hearts to the bottom of its depths.

Were it not for Thurman’s “angel with the flaming sword” guarding the altar of our hearts we would surely despair beyond measure.  Were it not for that fiery angel we might surely give up hope. 

Morning comes and those who most loved Jesus – those who followed him throughout his ministry and either fled Thursday night or stood watch near the cross on Friday – they gather, as do we, to wait.  Their inward seas now becalmed.  But it’s not a comfortable calm by any means – rather one that comes after having cried until one can cry no more.

And yet the angel with the flaming sword stands guard over our hearts even as it stood guard over Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalen, Peter, James, John, and so many others.  “Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon the…altar [of their hearts – of our hearts] unless it has the mark of [their – of our –] inner authority.”  

Author Frederick Buechner has written, “Anxiety and fear are what we know best…. Wars and rumors of wars…. We have heard so much tragic news that when the news is good we cannot hear it” (Synthesis CE, 4/1/2018). The temptation is to let the world’s anxiety and fear, hostility and violence, anger and hypocrisy, find their way to our altars - to let the 24-7 newsfeeds overwhelm our lives.  The angel stands guard, but we all too often find ways around that flaming sword.

This Holy Saturday, as is the case every day of our lives, we get to decide what will gain "the fluid grace of our consent." We can find ways of putting peace and hope on the altars of our hearts.  We can find ways of placing compassion and mercy, ways of placing forgiveness, grace and love, on the altar.  We can do that because we know the rest of the story - because knowingly, we wait in quiet anticipation this morning. 

And yet, as busy as we may let our lives get later today, we do so with the hope of resurrection echoing in the deepest places of our hearts. 

This day, and every day, we get to choose what we will help slip by the angel who stands guard over the altar of our hearts.  We get to choose life – life for ourselves and life for our world.  But for the moment, on this quiet Holy Saturday, we wait.

Good Friday; John 18:1-19:42; St. Paul’s, 3/28/2018

Jim Melnyk: “Truth Will Rise”

As I stand before you in this place, on this most holy day, it occurs to me that Good Friday should challenge each of us to decide what we believe, and what this day means for us.

I believe that in Jesus, God came among us – and comes among us still – in an incredibly unique and life-changing, world-changing, way.  I don’t pretend to be able to explain how or why that is, beyond the love of God for God’s creation.  St. Julian of Norwich said it so well, “And so I saw full surely that before ever God made us, [God] loved us.  And this love was never quenched nor ever shall be.”  And again she wrote, “Would you know [our] Lord’s meaning in this?  Learn it well.  Love was [God's] meaning.  Who showed it you?  Love.  What did [God] show you?  Love.  Why did [God] show you?  For love.... Thus did I learn that love was our Lord's meaning” (Enfolded in Love: Daily Readings with Julian of Norwich, p. 59-60).

Now I realize there are all kinds of competing theologies out there as to why this day happened in the life of Jesus – in the life of this world.  And while I realize it happened in a little-known, little-considered, corner of the world so long ago, it is to me the most compelling, powerful story of history.

Despite theologies that claim differently, I do not believe God decreed from the beginning of time that Jesus needed to die on the cross.  I do not believe that God, or the devil, or anyone for that matter, had to be paid off to free us from our sin – though I do believe we enslave ourselves to sin – sometimes without a second thought.  I don't believe that blood which is shed by human hands – either animal or human blood – Jesus' in particular – somehow appeases God and causes or allows God to accept us.  I do believe this world needed to be – and still needs to be – shaken from its selfish complacency.  Can you read the Internet, the daily paper or watch the news and not believe that?

I believe that Jesus, knowing full well what his revolutionary message of justice, peace and love would mean for his life, stayed the course – preached the Good News of God to people desperate for hope, and to those whose lives would be shaken to the core by the Gospel’s inclination to turn the status quo on its ear (or on its rear).  I believe that Jesus willingly, knowingly, proclaimed a Gospel that would end up demanding his life at the hands of those who stood to lose the most by the inbreaking of God’s kingdom on earth.  And so in a way, I guess, I believe Good Friday – given the nature of power in this world – was, indeed, inevitable.  The moment Jesus began to proclaim the Dream of God – a dream of justice, a dream of inclusion, a dream of radical welcome, of peace, and of God's love – the moment Jesus first opened his mouth, whether in the synagogue in his home town or along Galilee's shore, he became a marked man, and his life was forfeit on behalf of the kingdom of God.

I’d like to think that I could willingly, knowingly, go to my death to save the people I love the most – but I just don’t know for sure.

I find it incredible that a person – that Jesus – would willingly go to the cross to teach us the immeasurable love of God – and I believe that’s exactly what he did.  I find it incredible – but know it to be true somewhere deep within my heart – that along with Jesus, God suffered exceedingly in the midst of this awful, and awe-filled, day.  Just as I believe that God, because of the unique nature of Jesus, and God's timeless love for us, I believe that God suffers with us in the midst of our own pain and sorrow in life.  That is part of the gift of Jesus’ sojourn among us.

I can’t pretend to understand fully why we suffer as we do in our lives.  I think it has something to do with God giving creation its own freedom and its own integrity.  When we, as human beings, chose to exercise our gift of free will, God basically said to us, “Folks, we’re all in this together now.  You have chosen to exercise the ability to choose.  I will be with you – but I will not take your freedom away from you.  Choose wisely.  Choose life.  But be assured I will be with you whatever you choose.”

Would you willingly, knowingly, die for your loved ones?  Would you willingly, knowingly, die for someone you don’t even know?  I’m not sure how truthfully I can answer that question beyond an anxious, “I hope so.”  But that is what Jesus did.  As Jesus tells his disciples the night before his death, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).

Notice, but don’t get all caught up in the pageantry of kings and governors in today's Gospel story.  Notice, but don’t get sidetracked by the ridicule of what amounts to a kangaroo court.  Don’t fail to miss the anti-Semitic bias of John’s Gospel, or what looks like a nod on the Evangelist's part to gain Rome’s favor by excusing Pilate from his part in this tragedy.  The truth is that Jesus is executed on this day.  Jesus is crucified by an unholy alliance of religion, politics, and economic self-interest.  It’s the politics of Pilate and Rome.  It’s the economic self-interest of Herod and his court.  It’s the resolve of a religious aristocracy that now serves at the whim of Rome.

All that aside – and all that is important – but all that aside, remember a young man who brings Good News to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, release to the captives, freedom to the oppressed, and who proclaims the year of God’s favor for all who had been disenfranchised by the power brokers of their day.  Remember a young man who came among his people in the power of the Spirit of God to proclaim the coming of God’s kingdom – a communion of peace, of justice, of inclusion, of love.  Remember, as abolitionist Theodore Parker once proclaimed and Martin Luther King, Jr. echoed, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

This Good News – this Gospel – is what we were born to proclaim.  In the midst of death, we proclaim life.  In the midst of the many evils of this world – both great and small – we proclaim the grace of God, the peace of Christ, the power of love, and the hope of resurrection power in our very lives this day.

“Son of man,” God asked the prophet Ezekiel long ago, “Son of Man, can these bones – these dried up, dead, lifeless, dusty, cracked and broken bones – can these bones live?”  Yes! The answer is “Yes!”  Time and again our God proclaims, “Yes!”  Our dried up, aching, dusty, cracked and broken bones can live again! 

For a brief moment on this day – this day we call Good Friday – for a brief moment the powers of the world win, and the love of God hangs lifeless – suspended between heaven and earth.  But it is only for a moment in time – a moment in time that calls us back into the heart and the dream of God for this world.  For even nailed to a cross, or crushed to the earth, God’s truth will rise – God’s love will win the day. (based on the words of MLK, Jr quoting William Cullen Bryant and James Russell Lowell)

What Do We Do?

Palm Sunday 2018 – Introduction to The Passion According to Mark 

St. Paul’s, Smithfield Jim Melnyk: "What Do We Do?"

What do we do with a Sunday like Palm Sunday?  It starts with the air of a festival – cheering crowds lining the streets and shouting their “hosannas” as Jesus rides into Jerusalem.  Even if the people were to stop shouting, Jesus tells the religious leaders who confront him; the very stones along the way would take up the cry. 

What do we do with a Sunday like Palm Sunday – this story like something out of the haunted depths of Stephen King’s mind – a story where, before we finish telling the tale our hero is found beaten, bloodied and hanging on a cross?  What do we do with a hero’s tale gone awry?  What do we do when the party is spoiled – when the guest of honor is dragged away before our very eyes – and we view a fall so great that it shakes the very ground upon which we stand?  What do we do with a Sunday like Palm Sunday?

Our temptation, I believe, is to watch it unfold from afar – like many of Jesus’ disciples who fled on the night of his arrest.  The temptation to hear the story with closed ears – or with what theologian Marcus Borg would call, a “closed heart.”  After all, we’ve heard the story before.  We know how it turns out.  We’ve read the last chapter of the book.  Why invest our emotions yet again?

But there’s something about this story that should give us pause no matter how many times we hear it – perhaps even give us chill bumps, or make the hair on our necks stand on end.  Because, it seems to me, the pattern of the story is so familiar to us – and not just because we’ve read the book or retold the Passion Narrative every year since we were yea tall – but because we’ve seen its reality lived out before our very eyes – sometimes within our very lives.  If we listen with open hearts we see the rhythm of the story all around.

Since the last time we read any version of the Passion there have been fellow parishioners – perhaps even someone sitting next to you this morning – whose lives have changed drastically: a summons to a supervisor’s office and a pink slip – an unexpected phone call from the doctor – a summons from a family member – come home right away, your father, or your mother, your sibling may not make it through the night – or perhaps even a betrayal by a close friend – all realities of life and death.  I think of the line from one of my favorite Sinatra ballads, “That’s life.  That’s what all the people say.  Riding high in April, shot down in May.”  The whiplash of Palm Sunday is often all too real for all too many of us gathered here today.  Oh, what do we do with a Sunday like Palm Sunday?

It is the women in the story who leave us with an example of how to listen with open hearts – those who stand by the cross until the bitter end – who seem to hold on to hope up until the last possible moment – who sit by the tomb as Jesus is buried – it is the women at the cross who first meet the Risen Christ.

We live in a broken world.  Frederick Buechner puts it this way: “God creates the world; the world gets lost…”  God creates the world; the world gets lost… (Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity).  We look at the Bible and we see in the faith stories unfolding before us the image of a God who, to use Buechner’s words, “seeks to restore the world to the glory for which God created it” (ibid).  And in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus we find a way – a roadmap – a pathway that can bring not only each of us – but this “lost” world of ours back into the heart of God.  As forsaken as Jesus may feel as the reality of death overwhelms him – “My God, my God!  Why have you forsaken me?” – God is still present – as God is always present for each of us – for the whole of God’s creation.

What do we do with a Sunday like Palm Sunday?  We stay in the story.  We walk the streets of Jerusalem with Jesus in his final days.  We break bread together and wash one another’s feet – as Jesus commanded we do in remembrance of him.  We stand at the cross with the women who followed Jesus and offer our own lost-ness.  We offer our own brokenness.  We offer our own pain.  We offer our own need for forgiveness and reconciliation – as individuals and as a community that spans not just this church, or this town – but this county – this state – this nation – this world.  And we offer to God all of our hopes and dreams for tomorrow. 

We stand in the midst of the One who gives up his life for the life of the world – the One who reminds us how powerful love can be.  But just as the whole story doesn’t begin with betrayal and arrest – it never ends at the place of the skull.  In the beginning, there was God.  Even when we feel most lost – when we feel most alone – when we feel most abandoned – even when we feel most broken – there is God.  And when the story comes to its final ending – waiting for us – wanting us – embracing us – loving us – and ultimately raising us – there is God.