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A sermon preached on April 19, 2009 based upon John 20:19 – 29, and entitled “Why Church Matters.”

There is an unanswered question raised by the story Bob read for us. Why wasn’t Thomas in Church on that first night, the one when Jesus suddenly showed up and filled them all with God’s peace?

We don’t know why. We can speculate. Maybe Thomas felt like he didn’t need church.  Maybe he just felt like sleeping in. Or maybe he was embarrassed — afraid that he’d cry like a baby in the presence of the others — and he just couldn’t handle it.

Who knows? In a certain sense, it doesn’t really matter why he missed church. He just did, that’s all. He wasn’t there when Jesus showed up.

Church is like that. You can’t predict what you’ll get when you come to worship.

There are Sundays when it can seem dry, empty, and you’re just going through the motions. Other times you show up, not expecting much, and you are surprised by a sense of the presence of God so thick you could cut it with a knife. It can be life changing.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could get it together every Sunday — you know, have the preaching so inspiring, the music so beautiful, the prayers so moving, the people so present and loving, that we could guarantee you’d get yourself a powerful experience of the presence of God every Sunday?

The thing is, though, that if we could guarantee the “experience of God” each Sunday, well, it wouldn’t  be God, would it? It would be some kind of trick pony.

The wind blows where it will, said Jesus, you can’t see it, nor control it. So it is with the holy spirit. If you can control it, it wouldn’t be the holy spirit.

Nonetheless, there is something about the coming together of a community of people who are attempting, as best they can, to be open to Jesus, that is, as they say, priceless. Jesus said, “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am also.”

Most of us here this morning are familiar with the story of Tracy. Tracy’s a beloved member of our congregation who, this past Friday, at the age of 33, two years after her initial arrest, was finally sentenced for the crime of breaking the trust given to her as a teacher, having had inappropriate relationship with one of her students.

We are all, everyone of us, a mixture of virtue and vice, light and darkness, sin and grace, belief and unbelief. For some, the light is more obviously manifest, in others, the darkness.

For most of Tracy’s life, she was a person with an impeccable reputation. As a youth she did well in school, stayed away from trouble, did countless hours of community service. She became what she had always wanted to be: a teacher, serving two years in Kuwait, and then returning to work with underprivileged boys from Newark.

This past two years, however, it has been her weaknesses and flaws, rather than her strengths and virtues, that have been on display, and in such a public way as well. It has been very, very tough on her, to say the least.

I am convinced that if we really get it about Jesus, there is no way that any of us can stand in condemnation. We are all sinners, saved by grace, and that is more than just a slogan, it is the truth. Sometimes it takes a bit of living in this world to catch on to what it means. But it is all there in the Gospels if we are willing to hear it.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us that there is no real difference between a desire and a deed. On one level that seems ridiculous: of course there is a difference between my thinking I’d like to punch somebody in the face and actually punching that person in the face. Just ask the person with the face.

But on the level of our soul before God, there really isn’t any difference. Jesus said that if you feel lust, then you are capable, given the right – or should we say – ”wrong” set of circumstances, of committing adultery, of breaking your trust.

Jesus said that if you feel rage in your heart, then you are quite capable, given an unfortunate turn of events, of committing murder.

The same sort of thing applies with fear. Everyone of the Gospels includes the story of how at the Last Supper Peter and the others tried to convince themselves and Jesus that whatever came down Jesus could trust them to stand by him. When Jesus was arrested, and the fear took over, they did indeed betray his trust. But Jesus had already known that about them.

So how are we to respond to this truth? Are we to dedicate ourselves to ridding ourselves of every little bit of lust, of rage, of fear, indeed of unbelief?

We can try, but it won’t work.

If you really get Jesus, I think this is where you come down: There but for the grace of God go I, which is why we can’t condemn anybody.

And so we pray daily, just as Jesus taught us, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” We pray this because we know we are weak, and only a fool believes he can resist all temptation.

I am very proud of our congregation, and perhaps I should be careful about this, because pride is a set up for a fall. But I am proud, because I think our congregation gets it about the “There but for the grace of God go I” part.

So for those of you who weren’t in the courtroom on Friday, I want to give a wrap up. After two years of anguished waiting, during which Tracy went through the fires, she came, through the grace of God, to a place where she was ready to proceed on to the next step — her prison sentence. She was still prone to bouts of tears, but, there was also a peace in her — that same peace, I’m convinced that Jesus bestowed on his disciples when he appeared to them suddenly in that upper room where they were huddled together between locked doors, full of fear and self-contempt.

A big part of leading her to this place of peace was the love of her church family. Last Sunday — Easter — following our worship celebration, about sixty of us gathered briefly at the altar to pray for Tracy, to hug her, to tell her once more that we love her.

Friday morning, twenty five of us were able to take the time to make the trip to the Essex County Courthouse, where Tracy was to appear before the judge one last time to receive her sentence.

We arrived there knowing that the judge had the discretion to sentence Tracy from 5 to 7 years in prison, with a requirement that 85% of her time be served. The prosecutor wanted seven years. A couple of us were given the opportunity to address the judge to describe the confidence we had in Tracy’s goodness in spite of the crime she had committed, and to express our commitment to be there for Tracy as she begins to rebuild her life — to find a new way to offer her gifts in service.

At the end, when it came time for the sentencing, the Judge indicated that because of the serious nature of Tracy’s crime, she had intended to sentence Tracy to the full seven years, but as a result of what she had witnessed in the courtroom that morning, she had been moved to reduce the sentence to five years. Tracy was led from the courtroom in handcuffs, and despite the handcuffs, she seemed happy, realizing that the judge had just reduced her actual prison time by about 21 months.

“I love you, and thank you,” she said to all of us.

As I said before, the very worst of what Tracy is capable of has been on display publicly, a burden that the rest of us would ever want to have to go through. In the courtroom, we were able to lift up Tracy’s extraordinary gifts, as well as the great good she has accomplished in her life.

I want to finish by lifting up an aspect of Tracy which, in retrospect, does seem quite remarkable, and that is her realization from early on that it was really, really important to bind oneself to a faith community.

As a child, Tracy’s family wasn’t a church family. They would later become one for sure, but it was Tracy herself who took the lead in this. When she was 13, she came here for the first time by the invitation of a friend. She continued to come on her own. She became the youngest member of the choir, she joined the confirmation class, the youth group.

Eventually, her father Al and her brother Tim, impressed by what church meant to Tracy, followed her lead, and began attending, and before long, they were as fully connected to the church as Tracy was.

Most of the time, there is this falling away from church that happens with teenagers as they become independent;  later they often return, though sometimes they don’t. None of this ever happened for Tracy, she seemed to understand on a very deep level that she needed to be connected to her faith community. For the next 20 years, Tracy was here in worship pretty much whenever it was physically possible. Through the years she continued to sing in the choir.

I’m sure there were plenty of times for Tracy during these past twenty years when she could have said, “This is boring. This isn’t doing anything for me.” She seemed to realize that what happens here in Church goes deeper than the fleeting experiences from week to week…

that you need to be connected for those times when Jesus does choose to show up… that you need to be connected to the church for those times when the world falls apart around you, and you find it so very hard to have faith yourself, so that there are these spiritual brothers and sisters who can, for a time, have faith for you.

Thomas missed church that first Sunday of the resurrection. Afterwards, he just couldn’t believe what the others told him about what had happened in church the past Sunday. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

It is striking that the others didn’t throw Thomas out of the church for not believing the way they did. They didn’t cast him out; they just loved him. And to his credit, Thomas got back in the habit of coming regularly to church.

And then one Sunday, to his great surprise, Jesus showed up.

Thomas had seen a lot of horrible stuff in this world — the worst of which was the sight of his friend Jesus getting nailed to a cross. He had thought that this horrible stuff had pretty much proved there was no God of love. To his great surprise, there was Jesus, suddenly standing before him, showing him the wounds on his body.

Lo and behold, God takes what is ugly and broken and makes something beautiful.

Lord I believe, help my unbelief.

Unlike the women, you and I — we already know all about Easter, so in contrast to the women, we’re not surprised that the tomb is empty, and that the angel is there. The surprising part for us is in what follows in Mark‘s Gospel:

This is not what we have come to expect from Easter morning.

So what’s going on here?

You may know that Mark’s Gospel is the shortest, and, the earliest written of the four Gospels. There is something raw about it, and, I think, something really honest about it.

There is a moving story that occurs midway in three of the Gospels — Matthew, Mark and Luke, about how Jesus came down from a retreat up on a mountain and immediately encounters a terribly distressed father who has a very sick son — tormented by these horrible, wrenching seizures. The father is desperate.

If you are a parent, it’s not hard to put yourselves in his shoes. He has brought his boy to Jesus’ disciples, but they could do nothing for him. His desperation is mounting.

Now he brings his boy to Jesus. The three Gospels accounts of this story have a lot in common. Since Mark was written first, we can assume that Matthew and Luke took the story from Mark, and then edited their own version.

There is one noteworthy difference. After Jesus says, “All things are possible for the person who believes,” Mark records this anguished cry of the father,

But that’s not how real life is experienced. “I believe, help my unbelief,” is a pretty good summary statement for all of us.

It certainly was for the disciples themselves. Sure they had faith. They wouldn’t have been able to leave everything to follow Jesus as he wandered about the countryside if they didn’t have faith.

But there was something inside them that was in tension with their faith. Call it unbelief, call it doubt, call it fear, call it pride. But this other thing keeps showing up in the disciples throughout the Gospel.

 When these little children, so in-the-moment, came flocking to Jesus, drawn to him like a magnet, the disciples view them as an interruption, an irritant, as not-important-enough, and try to keep the children away. 

“No,” said Jesus, “to such belongs the kingdom of God. And unless you learn what they’ve got to teach you, you’re going to miss the kingdom yourself.”

The disciples were dumbfounded. “Wait a minute, Jesus, you’re telling us it’s not cool to rich? It’s not the sign of God’s blessing that we’ve always been told it is?”

“How hard it will be for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

The disciples kept jockeying amongst themselves to be considered the great ones — the way human beings have always done since the beginning of history. They couldn’t let go of thinking about “greatness” the world‘s way — you know, that it means having lots of money and the power to order other people around. But Jesus kept saying, “You don’t get it, this is what real greatness looks like:  it’s giving a cup of cold water to someone who is thirsty, as though you were that person’s slave.”

So when Jesus and the disciples finally get to Jerusalem, they reach the ultimate test of the faith that Jesus embodied. It was time to put their money where they mouth is, so to speak.

“Okay, my friends. I never said this would be easy. We’ve come to Jerusalem to stand face to face with the evil powers of this world that seek to crush life and love and hope.

“What do you mean he’s alive?  Are you kidding me?”

And so they ran, their hearts full of terror.

 Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

A sermon delivered on April 5, 2009 (Palm Sunday) by Bob Keller based upon Mark 11: 1 – 11 and Mark 14: 1 – 15, entitled “Step-by-Step from the Palms to the Passion.”

 It’s Palm Sunday.  Earlier, David read the account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem from Mark’s Gospel.  The prophecies of Zechariah and from Isaiah were fulfilled as he rode into Jerusalem that Sunday on a colt, the foal of a donkey – one that had never had a rider upon it.

Now I’m not sure how the crowd formed, but it did form.  There were thousands upon thousands of Jews in the city for the Passover celebration, the holiest time of the Jewish calendar.  Word would have, could have, spread quickly through a crowd like that.

Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

These are words the Jews had been longing to hear – and they heard them that day.  Imagine being there.  You move toward the crowd.  And you can’t see a thing!  You crane your neck.  You stand on a wall.  You push and shove – and you’re shouting Hosanna!, too!  You watch little children squeeze between the legs of adults just to see what the fuss is about.  And then, then, you see him.

It is just as it was foretold.  These people had sung from Psalm 118 – “O Lord save us, O Lord, grant us success.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

They knew the words of the prophet Zechariah – “See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Our king is finally here!  Now the Romans will be forced out of Jerusalem.  No longer will we have to watch our backs.  Our Holy City will once again be ours!

Expectations couldn’t have been higher for the salvation of Jerusalem and the emancipation of the Jews.  So they danced.  They sang.  It was a celebration to end all celebrations!  They shouted Hosanna!

There is a story told of a young boy that lived on a farm on the outskirts of a city, probably somewhere in Nebraska or Iowa, many years ago.  This was in the days before TV brought images into every living room in the land.  Well this boy was on his way home from school one day and he saw a few men putting something up on a fence.  When they were finished, he went to have a look. There on the fence was a poster – a big poster announcing that the circus was coming to town!

The boy had never seen anything like what was portrayed on the poster.  Pictures of roaring lions and tigers and elephants and a man on a trapeze were on the poster.  About the most exciting thing the boy had seen to date was the county fair. 

His eyes were as big as saucers as he ran home with the image of the circus poster fresh in his little head.  He found his father and said, “Dad, Dad – can I go? Can I go?”

His father was confused and said, “Where?”

“Dad, it’s the circus.  It’s coming to town!  Can I go?  Can I go?”

Money was tight back then, but the father agreed, as long as the boy did his chores.

The day arrived for the circus and the boy could hardly contain himself.  All of his chores were done early and he went to his father. 

“Dad, all my chores are done and the circus is coming today.  Can I go?  You promised.”

The father reached into his pocket and pulled out a dollar.  He handed it to the boy and said. “Have a good time!”  That was more money than the boy had ever seen before and he tucked it carefully into his own pocket.

The boy ran to town and got a spot among the anxious crowd.  Then he saw it. It was just like on the poster!  It was the circus parade!  The band passed by.  Then there were the beautiful performers in their circus costumes.  He spotted a man that looked just like the trapeze man on the poster.  And there were tumblers and jugglers and horses decorated with fancy ribbons and plumes.  What a sight!

Then the wagons came with the roaring lions and tigers.  He was scared, but he was frozen in awe and what he was seeing!   As he looked down the street he saw puffs of smoke.  Were they bringing a locomotive down the street?!?  Then he heard it!   It was the steam-powered calliope.

Then the elephants came.  They were the biggest animals he had ever seen!

At the very end of the parade was a single clown, complete with funny costume, made-up face and big, floppy shoes.  The boy ran up to the clown and put his dollar in the clown’s hand.

He thought he had seen the circus.  He thought that was all there was.  He went home satisfied.

And just a few short days after Jesus entered Jerusalem, their Hosannas would turn to shouts of Crucify him!  Crucify him!

Why?

Their dreams, their expectations, met the stark brick wall of reality – Jesus’ reality.  They just didn’t understand.  Luke’s gospel tells us that even Jesus wept as he rode into Jerusalem, for he knew the dreams of this day would turn into the reality of pain, suffering and death.

Jesus wasn’t the warrior king that would come to destroy the Romans.  He came to destroy death. Jesus was a suffering Messiah, a king who would suffer for the sins of all the people.

And the people could not understand this.  Their expectations of a conquering king were not fulfilled.  They cried crucify him because Jesus had let them down. They were celebrating Passover, but they didn’t understand that Jesus was the lamb who was to be sacrificed. 

The people missed the point and they were angry.

In the passage that David read just before the sermon, also from Mark’s gospel, we learn of someone who did understand.  Here we meet a woman, but only in John’s gospel does she have a name – Mary.  Was she Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus?  Mary Magdalene?  We don’t know.  But she was a woman so overcome with love for the Lord that she lavished quite an extravagance on Him. 

Now, admit it, we’ve all done some pretty extravagant  things for love, haven’t we?  We do it because our love has no bounds – we’ve spent too much, stayed too long, let other things go.

But this woman poured out the equivalent of a year’s pay on Jesus head.  She had to.  She broke the jar.  What can be saved in a broken jar?  Then she took down her hair – hair was a woman’s ‘crowning glory’ in those days – and wiped the feet of Jesus.

We were told that those in the room were indignant, especially the disciples.  That perfume could have been sold and the money distributed to the poor, they said.

  But Jesus said, “Leave her alone.”  He added. “She did what she could.  She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.  ….Throughout the world, what she has done will … be told, in memory of her.”

When the day comes that I stand before God’s throne, I hope to hear Jesus say, “Father, this is Bob. He is mine, & he did what he could. Many others did more. Some did less. But he took what we gave him & he did what he could.”

That is being like Mary and, in a way, that is being like Jesus.  Jesus didn’t ride halfway into Jerusalem.  He never “half-healed” a leper.  He never restored partial sight.  He never let a lame man go with a slight limp.  No!  The leper was healed.  The blind saw.  The lame walked and ran and danced.

And Jesus went all the way to the cross.  Please, this Holy Week, don’t jump from the triumphal entry to the empty tomb.  Take it step-by-step.  Go from “the palm” to the passion. 

Remember why Jesus wept as he entered Jerusalem – because he knew that so many just didn’t understand, but he died for them, and for me, and for you, anyway.  We need to focus on the passion as well as the palm; the future as well as the present; and we need to see Jesus as God.  It will only be by looking to the cross that we can realize just what kind of sacrifice Jesus made for us out of His love for us.

Remember the One who came to take our place.  Remember that He who died for us is still living today, and He is still loving us today.

As we remember these things, let’s not come halfway, but all the way to the Lord’s Table as we celebrate the love and grace provided to us.  He chose us as His own and He showed that grace by going all the way to the cross for all of us.  His life, His death and His resurrection give us the power to see Him, to love Him, as He first loved us.