Ghosts

A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter based upon Luke 24:36 - 48

In the name of Jesus; amen

I love a good ghost story. If I have a choice between seeing a romantic comedy or a scary movie, I will always choose the scary movie and if ghosts are involved all the better. I like to be frightened when I’m reading a book or seeing a movie; but I also like to be able to put the book away or turn the movie off or leave the theatre and reenter the world of reality where the make-believe is only the stuff of imagination.

There is a show on the Sci-fi Channel called Ghost Hunters. A team of people go around trying to scientifically prove or disprove hauntings. I catch it every once in awhile and I’m always fascinated by it because they go about their jobs as skeptics trying to be proven wrong.

They are lead by Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, who are Roto-Rooter Plumbers by day and ghost hunters by night. They travel all over the country trying to determine if ghosts really do haunt places. And their web-site is now the most visited paranormal web-site in the world.

Most of the time very little happens and the stories that they have gone to investigate appear to be embellished or made-up entirely. But every once in awhile they find something strange. Noises that shouldn’t be heard or shadows that shouldn’t be seen. Cold spots, a sign of a ghostly presence, occur where it should be warm or, on one episode I saw, a lamp moves for no reason across a bed stand in a haunted hotel.

I have ghost stories too. Ask me about them later if you’d like. Typically when I’m asked if I believe in ghosts I will tell you that there are a lot of things in this world that can’t be explained. Scripture itself is filled with them: demons, possessions, astrology, precognition, and spirits all make appearances in the pages of the Bible. And while we are a modern day people, with modern day understandings of science, that doesn’t necessarily, mean that those things don’t exist.

Today’s gospel reading begins as a ghost story. It is late Sunday night and the eleven disciples together with their companions are hiding out until it is safe to leave Jerusalem. Earlier that day some of the women who were with them had gone to the tomb of Jesus to take spices to properly bury his body. But they had returned with a strange story, a story that they had quickly dismissed because it was illogical and impossible.

They had said that there were angels in the tomb and that the angels had said that Jesus was no longer dead. And when Peter and some of the other disciples had gone to check all they had found was an empty tomb and the linen cloths that had been Jesus’ burial shroud.

Then later two of those who had been with them set out to a town called Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem, in an attempt to escape the Roman and Jewish authorities. Their sense of fear was already heightened as they wondered if their friends would make it to safety.

It was now night-time and when the doors opened and it was Cleopas and his companion (perhaps his wife) with another story of Jesus not being dead… well, that’s a classic in the set-up for a good ghost story.

All the elements are there: tension, strange reports, danger. And don’t forget that someone has just died and died terribly. And they all watched it happen and did nothing to try and stop it.

There must have been a great deal of guilt in that room mixed with apprehension and fear. So when Jesus appears out of nowhere it doesn’t matter what he says… they are “startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.”

I love a good ghost story and if you ask me later I will tell you stories of some of the strange things that I have seen in my life, but this is not a ghost story.

It might have all the elements of a Stephen King novel and it might give you nightmares if Wes Craven (director of Nightmare on Elm Street and the Scream trilogy) directed a movie about it, but there is a twist in this story that takes it far out of the horror genre: Jesus isn’t a ghost.

“Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And to prove he’s real he asks for something to eat.

When asked if I believe in ghosts, I will often say that I have seen and experienced some strange things. I will even admit that they are possible, but I will also be clear that I don’t put my faith in them.

We are not a people who believe in an afterlife of spirits or ghosts. I might threaten my husband that if he does something I don’t like after I die that I will come back and haunt him, but I don’t believe that I will and to his credit he doesn’t either.

Instead, we are a resurrection people. That is something entirely different. It is a promise that death isn’t final, but that there is something more. And that “more” isn’t just spiritual… we won’t be ghosts or pieces of ourselves; but whole beings. And it’s not a promise of reincarnation where we keep coming back until we get it right.

The first words that Jesus speaks to his followers who are gathered together in fear and sorrow and guilt are “Shalom” that is: “Peace be with you.” There are implications to that word, Shalom. It implies blessing and wholeness… complete-ness.
We are made complete in the resurrection we have been promised through Jesus’ death and resurrection.

We will not be just spirits, but whole, physical beings made complete through the forgiveness and love of God.

I love a good ghost story, but I love a resurrection story even more because it isn’t a story that I can close up or walk out on like a book or a movie. I love a resurrection story because it includes me and it promises a happy ending that really isn’t an ending.

Jesus took the disciples from fear and terror to wholeness and made them witnesses of the promise that God has made to us and our stories.

Not a ghost story, but a promise of resurrection.

Not a horror story, but a promise of forgiveness and healing.

Not a tragic story, but a promise of victory over death.

Alleluia! Amen!

Darkness to Life

An Easter Sermon Based upon John 20:1-18

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
Christ is Risen Indeed, Alleluia!

In the name of the risen Jesus; amen.

“While it was still dark…”

It was incredibly early in the morning, so early that it was still dark. One might even refer to the time that Mary Magdalene made her way to the tomb as night. My guess is she couldn’t sleep. The time in between the crucifixion and when it was appropriate to make her way to the tomb was excruciatingly long. He had died on a Friday and placed in a tomb before sundown began the Sabbath.

It was the way they counted time; from sundown to sundown and the Sabbath would have ended Saturday evening. For more than 24 hours, Mary waited to go to the place she had seen them lay the life-less body of this man whom she loved.

There were rules about the Sabbath and there were rules about death and the rules said that one needed to wait until after the Sabbath to tend to the dead. And it was Mary’s task, the task of a woman to anoint the dead, to make the burial proper, to ensure that the body and the spirit of the person were cared for.

She had tried to wait until the light came up, until sunshine would have lit her path, but the Gospel of John tells us that she couldn’t wait… “that while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.”

Her first thought was that someone had taken him and so she ran to find Peter and John to tell them. And they went, and they saw that what she said was true, but they didn’t offer her any comfort. After looking in the tomb, they went back home leaving her alone and weeping.

I can only imagine the thoughts that went through her head.

Did she curse herself for not doing more, for not coming sooner to make certain that Jesus was properly buried, to guard his grave to ensure that no one would take him away?

She had blown it, the one thing left that she could do for Jesus was to pour perfume on his corpse and say good-bye… and now her chance was gone.

At that moment the end of the story had come for her. She had watched him die and couldn’t do a thing about it and then she had waited too long to come to the tomb. She must have been overwhelmed by grief and anger; she must have forced herself to look into the hole where he was supposed to be so that when she saw the angels sitting there she didn’t recognize them for what they were.

And then that question: “Woman, why are you weeping?”

Obviously, they didn’t understand, so she explained it to them and then she explained it to the gardener: “They have taken him from me. If you know where he is, tell me and I will take him.”

Did the sun come up at just that moment? Maybe it was already daylight, but for Mary the response she was given created a brand new day.

And it wasn’t just for Mary… that next moment, the one after she begs for Jesus to be returned to her, is the moment when we are offered a brand new day.

She hears her name spoken and spoken by a familiar voice. It is the voice of the one who rid her of her demons. It is the voice of the one who loved her and cared for her. It is the voice of the one who asked her to follow him. It is the voice of the one who she had heard cry out two days before on the cross: “It is finished.”

It was the voice of her teacher and friend; it was the voice of Jesus.

The moment of Easter occurred for Mary when Jesus spoke her name.

It’s a funny thing really… we celebrate Christ’s resurrection on Sunday, but the resurrection most likely occurred on a Saturday. Jesus was gone from the tomb before Sunday morning happened, while it was still dark, still night-time, the way we figure time and the way John tells it.

So I would suggest that this is a day to celebrate more than Jesus rising from the tomb. Today isn’t just the day that we remember Jesus’ resurrection. It is the day when the one who was supposed to be dead calls our name: Easter is our brand new day. Easter is our resurrection day.

This is the day that the one who was supposed to be dead and buried stands in front of us and speaks our name in a familiar voice. The voice of the one who rids us of our sin. The voice of the one who loves us and cares for us. The voice of the one who asks us to follow him. The voice of the one who suffered and died for us on Good Friday.

The voice of our teacher and friend; the voice of Jesus!

Speaking our name!

That is our resurrection story. But the story doesn’t end there. It doesn’t end for Mary and it doesn’t end for us. The voice that spoke Mary’s name, that speaks our names, gives us a voice to use this brand new day.

It is a voice to shout Hallelujah! It is a voice to shout: Because he lives we live! It is a voice to proclaim: We have seen the Lord!
This isn’t a story meant to stay in the dark. Just as we aren’t meant to live in darkness or grief or sorrow, this is a story that is meant to be shared and brought to the light of a brand new day.

We are meant to tell our resurrection story, to share it like Mary Magdalene went and shared it with the disciples.

What happened that Easter day over 2,000 years ago will always be the most important moment in our story. The moment Jesus called Mary’s name is the moment that took us from weeping to rejoicing.

It changed everything for us.

Listen, God is calling your name now; proclaiming your resurrection and giving you a voice.

Use it to tell the story:

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Amen!

I'm Thirsty

A Sermon based upon John 19:28-30; preached at the Community Good Friday Service 2006


Three verses. One paragraph of scripture. How long did this moment take? This moment of Jesus knowing that all was done… accomplished? This moment from thirst to death?

I’ve been told that by the time a person feels thirsty they are already dehydrated. We are supposed to avoid thirst, to keep hydrated. Drink 8 glasses of water everyday. And that’s 8 glasses of water, not 8 other drinks; not coffee or soda or beer. We are supposed to put into our bodies those things that are good for us; to avoid those things which will cause thirst and dehydration.

It’s not always easy though. If you are one of those people who actually drinks 8 glasses of water every day, I am impressed. I don’t do it. It’s more likely that I’ve drank 8 cups of coffee today than even 1 glass of water.

And I know it’s not good for me, but I do it anyway.

John’s gospel tells us that Jesus’ thirst is a fulfillment of scripture, a reference to Psalm 69:21: “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.” But it’s hard to imagine that Jesus wasn’t actually thirsty.

Of the four gospels, my favorite has always been Luke, but I am in love with John’s gospel in a way that I do not feel about the other three. John is a theological writing, a book written to explain who God is. It was most likely written as an argument against other gospels that were circulating at the time.

These other gospels that John was concerned about were gnostic, what we consider to be a heresy. Gnosticism involved the belief in salvation through esoteric mystical knowledge by an initiated elite. As a rule, gnostics were extreme ascetics and believed the body to be evil. Gnosticism has been making a comeback with the highly popular book: The Da Vinci Code and the now with the emergence of the Gospel of Judas.

John wrote against the idea that one could attain a higher spiritual knowledge of God and because of that the Jesus of John’s gospel feels more human and real to me than the Jesus in Matthew, Mark, or Luke.

Jesus didn’t just say the words so that scripture could be fulfilled; Jesus really was thirsty and his thirst was a fulfillment of what was in scripture. Jesus didn’t just go through the motions of being crucified in order to make for an interesting story; Jesus really did get nailed to a cross, Jesus really did die.



There is a comfort in that. Death is a reality. It is not a higher spiritual existence or worse one that we can avoid by reaching a higher mystical knowledge of God.

What Jesus endured wasn’t esoteric… it was real.

I get thirsty and I’m sure you do too, even when we do our best to put all the right things into ourselves; we still get thirsty.

This past Sunday 49 year old, John Schettenhelm, a pastor in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod in Orange was riding his motorcycle and turning into his driveway when he was struck from behind and killed.

Stories like that make me thirsty.

In an article in the New Haven Register Orange First Selectman James Zeoli said late (Palm) Sunday he was struck by the reality that Schettenhelm’s congregation could not have lost its leader at a worse time, just one week before Easter.

Can we agree that there is never a good time for someone to get struck and killed in a motorcycle accident? There is never a good time for someone to get sick. There is never a good time for someone to lose their job. There is never a good time for huge medical bills. There is never a good time for a car to break down. There is never a good time to get in a fight with your spouse or your kids. There is never a good time for things like this to happen.

There is never a good time for extra stress in our lives. There is never a good time for suffering or sorrow or pain.

But this is reality… bad things happen and they happen at indiscriminate times.

There’s something else about John’s gospel that makes me madly in love with it: timing. While life is filled with happenstance, John’s gospel is filled with purposeful timing. Everything that happens, happens when it is supposed to and this real, human, Jesus begins to reorder creation, to reset the clock of our existence.

Jesus’ thirst isn’t just a fulfillment of scripture; it is God getting into our suffering at just the right time.

29A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. 30When Jesus had received the wine, he said, "It is finished." Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

This very real thirst, this fulfillment of scripture, was for us. It was purposeful and necessary so that God could be in our suffering. And that moment of Jesus’ refreshment with sour wine is God finding a way into our dehydration, into the arid places of our lives.

Jesus died at just the right time so that he could be in all the wrong times of our lives. And that action was done fully; it was completed, finished.

Jesus died and finished the thing that ensured our bad times would never be alone times. Jesus died and finished what was required for us not to be alone when we forget to put into us what is good for us and for those times that we can not seem to get enough.

Those 3 verses, barely one good paragraph of scripture and God did what was necessary to re-hydrate our lives.

Amen.