An Uncomfortable Story

Palm Sunday; Matthew’s Passion Narrative; St. Paul’s, 4/5/2020

Jim Melnyk: “An Uncomfortable Story”

Today the sermon acts as an introduction to the Passion Narrative rather than as a response. We are about to hear the story once again – Matthew’s take on the Passion of our Lord. It’s not a pretty story. There’s a certain amount of ugliness about it. It is not a comforting story. And although as Christians we believe it has a glorious outcome, we don’t have permission to read it all the way to the end today. The story ends with the grave. And although we will offer our prayers for the spiritual reception of our Lord’s body and blood this morning, the way our gospel story ends today, and the hymns we choose to sing today, temper the glory of Christ’s spiritual presence.

           

My former Church History professor, Don Armentrout, used to call this Sunday “a strange day” because “it has two names, two themes, [and] mixed moods.”[1] It’s been known as both Passion Sunday and Palm Sunday. But I’m thinking perhaps a better name for this day might be Paradox Sunday because of the extreme shifts in both tenor and tempo. This Paradox Sunday underscores the contradictory realities of the kingdoms of this world and the Kingdom of God – a kingdom “in which the least are the greatest, weakness is strength, and death brings life to all.”[2] Paradox Sunday serves as an entry way into Holy Week – a week where, as theologian Jürgen Moltmann once proclaimed, “God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh” with God.[3]

           

The paradoxical nature of the day is heightened by the two parades we bear witness to in our liturgy. The first parade was acknowledged by the blessing of palms and the proclamations of “hosanna” – which means “save us.” We recalled Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem through streets crowded with those who proclaim Jesus as the “One who comes in the name of the Lord.”But the gospel which we’re about to hear reminds us of a second parade – one that will take place before the week is out. We call it “the Way of the Cross.” It is a death march to a lonely hill outside the city of Jerusalem – a place where under darkened skies Jesus will breathe his last. In truth it is paradox – it is irony – it is scandalous – that the Messiah of God would die in such a cruel and torturous way.

           

Even the opening parade is paradoxical. We call it Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem, and many Christians proclaim it as a fulfillment of an ancient prediction; but that causes us to lose the symbolic power of the event. Theologian Marcus Borg challenges us to see this parade in a different light.

           

The so-called Triumphal Entry was actually a prophetic act by Jesus, “based on a passage from the prophets that spoke of a humble king who would enter Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey. He would be a king of peace,” Borg tells us, “who would banish chariots, warhorses, and battle bows from the land and command peace to the nations. By riding into Jerusalem on a young donkey,” writes Borg, “Jesus enacts his message: the kingdom of God of which [Jesus] speaks is a kingdom of peace,”[4] justice, and compassion rather than a kingdom of violence and military might.

It seems to me that the paradoxical nature of Palm Sunday and Holy Week is troubling for many of us. Jesus’ gospel message of justice, grace, and love resonates with us. It’s the Good News we want to experience and know for ourselves and for our world, not the evil of Good Friday. The ugliness of the crucifixion chills us. And the revolutionary, anti-imperial entry of Jesus into Jerusalem works for us as long as the demonstration doesn’t touch a part of our lives that is sacred to us. However, it’s when the revolutionary aspect of the gospel challenges how we live in this world that the message becomes uncomfortable – disquieting – perhaps even something to be discounted or ignored.

           

“What do I need to be saved from anyway?” we may ask. “What’s so wrong with my life that I should need to be saved? Isn’t that just the language of all those evangelical Christians who like to beat us over the head with their Bibles?” Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why many of us gathered together online this day may not make it back for the theologically and personally challenging liturgies of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

           

Listen to the story once again with fresh ears. Listen with fresh ears to the call for God’s kingdom – God’s community of justice, peace, and love. Listen with fresh ears for the revolutionary challenge inherent in that call by Jesus. Listen once again to the reality of brokenness in the human condition. Take time to read the longer version of the Passion narrative and see how familiar and perhaps even comfortable the challenges of Herod, Caiaphas and Pilate might sound. Do their mutterings not sound at least a bit familiar?

Listen to the story with the knowledge that the Herods, the High Priests, and the Pilates of this world don’t have the last say. Our brokenness, and the brokenness of the world, doesn’t have the last say. The Coronavirus, as overwhelming as it seems to so many right now, doesn’t have the last say. Death – even the violent death of an innocent man – doesn’t have the last say.

Walk through this hard week together as the Body of Christ – even while separated from one another – and remember we are called to be witnesses to God’s love. Listen with new ears – with fresh ears – as we hear the tale of betrayal and trial. Gather at the table in the upper room on Thursday night, experiencing the mystery of Christ’s self-giving in the washing of his disciples’ feet and the gift of his own body and blood for the life of the world. Remember our own sacramental gift of self to one another and to God as well in the many ways we touch each other’s lives. Watch with Jesus as he agonizes over the coming storm. Stand one more time at the foot of the cross and experience the paradox that in the Kingdom of God humility is greatness, weakness is strength, and most of all, that even in death we will find life.

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[1] Don Armentrout, Synthesis Commentary

[2] Paula Gooder, Sojourners Online

[3] Jurgen Moltmann, Synthesis Commentary

[4] Borg (paraphrased)

Breath of God

Lent 5A; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Ps. 137; John 11:1-44; St. Paul’s, 3/29/2020

Jim Melnyk: “Living Bones”

Ezekiel, priest and prophet whose name means “God strengthens,” suddenly finds himself taken up by the hand of the Lord and carried away by the Spirit – or the wind of God – finding himself in a valley of dry bones. This is perhaps the most well-known story from the prophet’s scroll, and it takes place at a moment in time most critical to his people. Israel has been wasting away in exile for quite some time now. Ezekiel had been given the harsh task of calling Judah to repentance prior to the capture and destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC, and then again during the harsh reality of exile after the leaders had failed to heed his challenge. Judah’s hope as a nation has withered away like the bodies and bones of those long dead.

           

In exile there were some who flourished, but most found themselves exploited, oppressed, and poor; fearful that God had abandoned them. They mourned for their lost city of Jerusalem and they mourned for their God whom many believed was relegated to Jerusalem. The Psalmist wrote: “By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willow there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth…. How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!”[1] Israel felt lost – felt dead and dry – felt abandoned by God.

             

Ezekiel, who has carried God’s word to chastise and to warn, is now called to speak words of comfort and hope. The Spirit of God brings the prophet to the valley covered in bones and Ezekiel is “struck both by their great number and by their extreme dryness.”[2] God, who is the true ruler of Israel, tells Ezekiel, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel.” “Our bones are dried up!” Israel cries to God. “Our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”[3] God instructs Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones, “and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath – or spirit – to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and cover you with skin, and put breath – or spirit – in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.[4] I prophesied as [God] commanded me,” writes Ezekiel, “and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.[5]”

           

Now the truth is, these bones – and the living beings that Ezekiel sees pulled together, sinew by sinew, bone by bone, flesh to flesh – are a vision granted Ezekiel by God giving him the image and words necessary to speak to a people in exile – a people whose hope was so ravaged by captivity that they believed themselves to be dead. Truly, if God can open the graves of those so long dead – can open their graves and bring them up from the grave with the Spirit of God breathed into their bodies – then surely God can bring Israel home to Jerusalem!

           

Ezekiel’s vision is a timeless one. Unlike Ezekiel’s other oracles, this pronouncement bears no date. If you read the book of Ezekiel you’ll see things like, “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles…. (It was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin)….”[6]  He is, for the most part, one of the more specific prophets when it comes to dates – except for this particular vision. Author Elie Wiesel, who survived the Nazi death camps and knew something of death and dry bones, suggested a reason for this. Wiesel believed that “Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dried bones bears no date because every generation needs to hear in its own time that these bones can live again.”[7]

Ezekiel’s vision is a word of hope for all who feel that life is lost. Though we be as dead as a sea of dry, disconnected, bones, Ezekiel tells us, God stands ready to breathe new life – new spirit – God’s own spirit – into our very souls. Can these bones live? Can these bones live?

           

Now, I wonder if Jesus has Ezekiel’s vision bouncing around in the back of his mind when he arrives at Bethany – most obviously a day late and a dollar short for his poor friend Lazarus. “Mortal, can these bones live?” “O, Lord God, you know.” I wonder if Martha, willing to challenge Jesus in the past, has Ezekiel’s vision bouncing around in the back of her mind when she sees Jesus arrive in Bethany – hoping against hope that Jesus can do for Lazarus what God does for the dry bones of the prophet’s vision – even if her hope goes beyond the prophet’s hope. “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask,” she says.

           

And, in the final analysis, isn’t that our hope as well – whether played out in the midst of shut-downs, empty grocery store aisles, Stay-at-Home orders, and self-quarantining? Whether in reconfigured worship and study in our faith communities, the sterile waiting rooms of the hospital, or in the back of our minds in the middle of our darkest nights? Whatever the events or circumstances are that bring us to the dry places of our lives, when all seems to be lost, don’t we hope with all our being that  the God of both Ezekiel and Jesus – that our God – can breathe new life where we feel – where we know – there is none? Isn’t that our hope? We who know, almost to a person, what it feels like at times to be lost or dried up, or perhaps even dead inside? Isn’t that what we hope for more than anything else – that “resurrection comes to despairing, dried-up people” – that we have a God “who can breathe life into our dried-up lives” and give us strength to face our lives – to live our lives – in this world and perhaps even change a thing or two while we’re at it?[8]

For all the wonder and promise of some great by-and-by – for all the hope and promise of eternity – don’t we really, more than anything else, want to know that new life – that new hope – that resurrection and redemption, that transformation and renewal – can be real for us now – in this life – for us today? When Jesus is asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” he doesn’t say, “Confess your miserable, wretched, sinful nature, be forgiven, and enjoy heaven someday.” He says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength – and love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s about transformation and resurrection now, not about some great heavenly panacea! Ezekiel’s vision, Jesus’ vision – are about new life now. Jesus doesn’t say, “I will be resurrection and I will be life sometime down the road in the great By-and-By.” Jesus says, “I AM resurrection and I AM life” – now. Today!

“Can these bones live?” asks God. “I am the resurrection and the life,” says Jesus, “whoever believes in me believes in me will live – even those who die. Do you believe this?”

           

In our hearts we know these bones can live. In our hearts we know resurrection is real. We’ve experienced it in our own lives. We’ve experienced it in the lives of so many others. Gracious God, in our driest and most lost times, even in times when death is just too real, put your breath within us – unbind us and let us go.

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[1] Psalm 137:1-5

[2] Katheryn Pfisterer, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol IV. 1499

[3] Ezekiel 37:11

[4] Ibid 37:4-6

[5] Ibid 37:10

[6] Ibid 1:1-2

[7] Pfisterer, 1504

[8] Nancy Hastings Sehested, Sojourners: Preaching the Word