Dear friends,
I’m grateful for the 50 days of Easter. I need the persistent, beyond-one-day reminder that there is new life rising in the midst of the death that assails us. I pray that you are experiencing God’s faithful presence beside you and within you as you move through this season.
Today’s worship service, in its entirety, may be viewed here:
If you wish to listen to the gospel reading and sermon, you may do so here:
The sermon is based on Psalm 4 and Luke 24:36b-48.
Psalm 4
1Answer me when I call, O God, defender of my cause; you set me free when I was in distress; have mercy on me and hear my prayer.
2“You mortals, how long will you dishonor my glory; how long will you love illusions and seek after lies?”
3Know that the Lord does wonders for the faithful; the Lord will hear me when I call.
4Tremble, then, and do not sin; speak to your heart in silence upon your bed.
5Offer the appointed sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.
6Many are saying, “Who will show us any good?” Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord.
7You have put gladness in my heart, more than when grain and wine abound.
8In peace, I will lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me rest secure.
Luke 24:36b-48
36bJesus himself stood among [the disciples] and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43and he took it and ate in their presence.
44Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things.”
Beloved of God, grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus.
When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for three months at “the house of the dying” in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. She asked, “And what can I do for you?” Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.
“What do you want me to pray for?” she asked. He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles form the United States: “Pray that I have clarity.”
She said firmly, “No, I will not do that.”
When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.”
When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”
(from Ruthless Trust, by Brennan Manning, 2000)
When I read this story recently, it was as though God was pulling back a curtain and letting sunshine pour into the room and illumine every surface. I wept, because I realized that for the last year—and probably long before that—I had been praying for clarity, to see clearly, to know.
And what I received instead—what God continues to give me—is deepening trust in the one who knows me, who sees us, who loves this world through death to life. I don’t have to see the way ahead clearly; I don’t have to know every next step, every next right thing, because God sees. God knows. And God refuses to leave us stuck in locked rooms and fearful minds. The Son—the risen Christ—pours into the rooms of our lives and gives us his peace.
Now, I think those first disciples may have actually received some clarity. And I sometimes begrudge them for being able to actually touch Jesus after his resurrection, to see his hands and his feet, to watch as he ate a piece of fish in their presence. I want to see Jesus. I want to touch him and know that this is no mere figment of my imagination, no story we tell ourselves to feel better.
In a world where there is still so much to doubt, to fear, to grieve—trauma residing in the bodies of God’s beloved, victims and violators caught in the grip of senseless violence that assaults our senses—I want to touch the body of this scarred Savior who knows what it is to be forsaken and betrayed. I want to see clearly—see in his wounds the wounds of the world—find the answers, bring the balm, know what to do.
But instead God offers the gift of trust, sunlight streaming into our lives and illuminating the truth: we are held secure—held together—in the scarred hands of our living Savior.
The trust to which the psalmist witnesses is the trust we are given as gift: In peace, I will lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me rest secure.
You alone, O Lord. Not our own knowledge or understanding. Not our own competence or strength. Not our own courage or wisdom. Not our own labor. Not our own faithfulness. Not even our own work and witness.
You alone, O Lord, make me rest secure.
The psalmist has a pulse on the world around them. Many are saying, ‘Who will show us any good?’
It’s a question, a lament, a yearning that is just as relevant and real today. Who will show us any good? We are clinging for life in this locked room; we are afraid for our future; we are destroying ourselves and this planet we call home. Who will show us any good?
In peace, I will lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me rest secure.
Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, Jesus says. See that it is I myself.
Don’t look down. Don’t look up. Don’t look miles and miles down the road. Don’t look to all the regrets of the past.
Look at my hands and my feet. Right here. Right now. I am here for you.
Can you imagine the disciples praying the psalm as they prepared to rest that night? They had been given the gift of trust. They no longer had to stay alert, alarmed and defensive, anxious and ready to be attacked. Instead, I imagine them praying: In peace, I will lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me rest secure.
And in the morning, and every day for the rest of their lives, the sunlight poured into their hearts and gave them peace so that they might live in trust—not always seeing, but seen; not always knowing, but known; not always loving as God intended for them to love, but loved.
We are seen and known and loved by a God who leads us through death to abundant life. His body is ours—flesh and bone, present, persistent, wounded and healed, hungry for hope to be proclaimed.
In peace, we lie down and sleep. And then, in trust, we rise. We proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins. We live the grace we’ve been given. We touch the hands and feet of the wounded ones all around us and we see Jesus. We are witnesses.
Krista Tippett, host of On Being, was recently reflecting on life in Minneapolis following the murder of George Floyd and now, hearts breaking anew over Daunte Wright. She writes, there was a new quality of seeing—of more of us moving from being spectators, as Rabbi Ariel Burger might say, to bearing witness. A hope was unleashed, and a muscular commitment and calling that crossed so many of our divides…I keep rediscovering that hope and fierce commitment still alive and growing. I am persuaded that indeed enough of us are preparing to be the generation, in bodies of every color, ready after so many generations of betrayal and blindness, to step onto that long arc of the moral universe that Martin Luther King Jr. invoked—and bend it, bend it, toward justice and towards the Beloved Community.
We are witnesses to the irrepressible, fully human and fully divine, love of God in Christ Jesus for this world—for bodies of every color.
We tell the story of a love that refuses for sin and death to have the final word.
We tell the story of a love that may not always provide clarity, but instead frees us to trust this body of which we are a part, this body that has known such trauma and sorrow and still rises from the grave and lives to free all creation for a life of real, incarnate, muscular love.
Thanks be to God for the gift of trust. Amen.
*Read Krista Tippet’s entire piece here: https://engage.onbeing.org/20210417_the_pause