Davison's Doodle

The Other Disciple

My words for Easter worship this morning.

The Other Disciple
John 20:1-18

What draws us to prayer, to sacred space, and worship this morning?  It is Gospel, good news, that is on our minds and in our hearts.  People who claim Christian faith around the world awake today to hear, gather to remember, to experience, to speak the words of Mary Magdalene that we know so well, “Rabbi, teacher . . . I have seen the Lord.”  No matter how young or old your faith, your heart knows what those words feel like.  No matter how often you attend worship or how involved you are in a faith community, you know what the voice of God sounds like beyond belief, beyond baptism, and after last echo of “Alleluia” fades.  Today we hear John’s account of Easter, but it is our story.  With good news on our minds and in our hearts I invite you into the Gospel of John to listen for your voice, your character in one Easter morning story.

Read the text – John 20:1-18

For a while now when Easter arrives I remember visiting Israel in January of 1999.  It was a study trip with a group from Lexington Theological Seminary.  I walked those places considered Holy by so many: Masada, Jericho, the Qumran community, the Temple Mount, the Dome of Rock, Galilee, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and Bethsaida.  The Jordan river is wide and there are places where anyone could hop across it.  The Church of the Holy Sepcular is in Jerusalem.  It is built on the place where Christian tradition says that Jesus was crucified and buried.  It is a large structure with many rooms.  The halls circle the building and at anytime monks or priests may come through the halls in a processional of prayer.  The main chamber of the church is crowded with icons, pilgrims and tourists awash in incense waiting for a turn to walk into the shrine that has been designated as “the tomb.”  Through a hall and down two flights of stairs is another area, the Chapel of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great.  It is dimly lit.  There are a few pews and the chancel area has a rail and places to kneel for prayer and reflection.  Icons and ancient words adorn the walls in every direction.  To the left of the chancel is a gate with a large chain and lock that look like they are from the middle ages.  There is one monk that serves the church who has the key.  Through the gate and down more narrow stairs is area of the church there an excavation area that has been converted into the Chapel of St. Vartan.  In this chapel there is a small wooden cross.  Candles and small flood lamps along the floor provide light.  Three small wooded benches are in the center of the room.  They look like they have been there a long time.  To the right of the cross is a stone that has a drawing on it that dates to the second century of our calendar (the Common Era).  The drawing is preserved behind glass.  It is a drawing of a boat, someone else might call it a ship; but it looked like a boat to me.  It is believed that the drawing was created by early Christian pilgrims visiting a site said to be the place of Jesus crucifixion and burial.  Beneath the boat is a Latin inscription that translates, “Lord we went.”

These second century pilgrims seem different from us.  Their understanding of science, the size of the world, the social order, lifestyle, the lack of technology that we take for granted: phones, cars, quick public transportation, the printing press, public education, 24hr cable news.   They relied on the words of others: stories, rumors, and legend to know Christ.  They relied on the life choices that followers of the Way made in living out the teachings of Jesus as they found their voice to proclaim him Christ.  These second century pilgrims relied on the interpretation of his teachings by those who claim to know him or learned from one of the descendants of his disciples.  When you take away our technological differences and social order these second century disciples are not so different from us?  One of them could have been a descendant of the other disciple that went with Mary and Peter that morning to the tomb.  Any one of us could be that disciple.

Easter is a confessional experience for those who claim Christian faith.  Confessional.  Not a, “bless me father for I have sinned” confessional experience that we sometimes think of when we hear this word.  No, this is a Confessional that is an aha moment.  It is an awareness of God, an Emmaus road journey, an answered prayer, an experience of the Risen Christ that is followed by reflection, prayer, study and conversation with the other disciple.  Like those second century disciples, we don’t know what really happened on that morning when Mary Magdalene went to the tomb or those days following the crucifixion.  Though we give authority to the Bible as a means of instruction and inspiration it is not, nor is it meant to be, a detailed history of the events of our faith ancestors.  The Bible is a glimpse into the faith struggles and stories of other disciples, and in that plot we have a chapter to write about our own lives and our own faith.  When I read the story in John, I think about being that other disciple.  It is on mornings like this one that we remember a confession: “Jesus is the Christ, son of a living God.  I accept and proclaim him Lord and Savor of my life.”  Depending on where you grew up attending Church or not, you have heard a version of those words echo from the mouth of a friend, a family member, even your own lips. It is in that moment and through your living since that day you are connected to Peter who is said to have denied knowing Jesus, but was called a rock of faith.  It was in that moment and through your living since that day that you are connected to Mary Magdalene proclaiming, “I have seen the Lord.”  Easter is a day Christians recognize and confess connection, but that has not been easy to do in our culture for a long time.  We are living in divided times and yet we have seen the Lord.  We have many tools to stay connected:  Did you get my letter or voice mail or email?  I sent you a Facebook message.  Did you see my tweet?  Can you hear me now?  Good.  But, our skills for nurturing and understanding connection still struggle to match our experience of faith, our experience of God in the risen Christ.  At their best, our faith communities, our church, helps us create and maintain healthy connections with God, family, and friends.  Our church, our faith communities, can help balance our living in the world and keep us accountable to our confession of faith.

Early Christendom designed creeds, statements of faith, to connect believers.  Those ancient ways of thinking and believing continue to inform many Christians and shape human culture.  But just as much as the creeds provided a unified voice in an ancient pluralistic world of worship, they also divide believers, set up institutional power structures, and support political views that fail to hear the teaching of Jesus about the kingdom of God nor practice kingdom ways of being citizens in the ancient world or our time.  Confession is more than assenting to one Lord, one holy catholic and apostolic Church, one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, or Trinitarian formula for knowing God.  Confession is willful.  Confession is faithful living that is will-filled.

We are connected to those first disciples when we raise our voice in that centuries old dialogue, is it right belief or right works that matters most?  Is it right belief or right works that best identifies us as Christians?  Here in our time you are, I am, that other disciple that ran with Peter to the tomb when we are a living confession of faith and practice our discipleship even when no one is looking.  I can hear Jesus saying, “Don’t go around measuring your goodness by what you don’t do, by what you deny yourself…what you resist and who you exclude.  Measure goodness…by what you embrace…what you create…and who you include.”  That’s a gospel that confronts my Easter confession: Rabbi . . . teacher . . . I have seen the Lord.

Do you recognize Jesus the Christ in your living?  You are the disciple that Jesus loved.  Just as Mary Magdalene did centuries ago, we have a knowledge and an experience of the risen Christ that asks us to go and tell.

A century from now how will other disciples know that we went?

SunRise Service Meditation

SunRise Service has been quiet time for me and that is the bias I bring to the worship experience.  The service this morning (7:00 am) was a blend of responsive liturgy and prayer, song, and hearing the Easter story from the Gospel of Mark.  The smell of trees blooming and the sounds of nature blended with the town, dogs, and our singing.  The preaching moment is called a mediation, but really, the preaching moment is in the gathering of spirits for sunRise as well as 11:00 am worship.  In this setting I think the brevity of words helps worshippers hear the Word.

Mark 16:1-13

It was early, first light and the women went to the tomb to tend the body of Jesus with spices.  It was personal and an act of respect.  I’ve always thought of Easter sunrise service as personal time with the spirit of Jesus.  That is the the Easter story we hear from Mark. We know the end of the story before we get to the tomb.  We come here knowing that he is not here, but we are drawn by our need to see, to hear an angle say, “He is not here”, to pay our respects, our need to experience the sunrise on our lives again.  It’s personal.

In the year of Hurricane Katrina, three days after the levees broke, I went to a family reunion in Louisiana.  I had not seen most of these people in twenty years.  I decided I could not leave until I visited my grandparents’ graves.  I know they are not there.  They are buried there, but the spirit of papaw and mamaw Davison, and that of grandma and grandpa Ferrier are far from the manicured lawn of the cemetery.  Being there helped me connect to a family story that I sometimes have run from, sometimes ignored or denied as part of my own.  There have been times in life when I have done the same with God and with my practice of faith.  I don’t know what kind of believers my grandparents where.  Neither side of the family was particularly religious.  The Scotch-Irish side were back-slidden southern Baptists and the French-Creole-Native American side were Christmas and Easter Catholics.  I went to the cemeteries, wept and prayed.  It was a long drive from Louisiana back home to Kentucky.  Somewhere between Little Rock and West Memphis I gave thanks to God that I went.

Do you remember your first sunrise service?  This week I told the bible study group that my first memory of sunrise service was at Aunt Ada’s farm.  I was young.  I was barely awake.  There were people.  We walked through the field to the stock pond that Aunt Ada let a church use as a site for the service.  My shoes were wet from the dew.  We stood the whole time and it seemed like hours.  I don’t know what the preacher said.  I was caught up in the unusual cold morning, my wet shoes, and the smell of horses.  My first sunRise experience was cold, dewy, and smelled of horses.

How will this personal time with the risen Christ touch you?  Those who gather for worship on Easter Sunday follow in the footsteps of Peter. They have heard the rumor that Jesus is alive and come to hear again for themselves that he is not here.  What if it is true? What if death is real, but not final? What if Jesus is not merely past but present? What if Jesus were to meet you here? What would life be then?

Martin Luther wrote, “Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in the spring-time.”  Maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said that if we are silent even the stones would shout! The Easter story continues today in us, through us, as God challenges the certainty of death with the promise of life.  Let the promise of life roll away the stone to your heart and hear the Easter proclamation: “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has been raised.  He is not here.”

Here this sacred space, sacred memory is personal.  Out there, past the gate we are called to turn amazement into good news, to tell, to let our living be a sign of God’s promise in Jesus, whom we call Christ.

Christ is risen, risen indeed.