Forgiveness Blooms

Mark 16:1-8

Here in the original ending of Mark we see the women going to anoint Jesus’ body. This is part of life; death.  It is known that all living things die.  It hangs over all of us and its reality is important to how we live on earth.  Call it survival if you want, call it thriving, but death shapes how we live. 

Fear is an important theme in this passage, but it was not fear of the dead body or of death.  I am always struck at how fearful some people are to be with a dead body, but these women were going to do the things we have professionals do today.  They were going to handle the body to pay deepest respects to the one lost.  No the fear was that Jesus was not there.

It is in this fear that Christian hope begins.  Remember Sarah laughs when she is told she will bear a child.  Yes because it is funny, but out of fear of this great possibility that can only happen because of the Divine.  The empty tomb is much more radical and hence the running in fear, not just nervous laughter.

God is the only true other.  What I mean is that because of death being part of life on earth, we are all in the same boat, or globe, what have you.  God is however beyond this as the creator.  I remember learning about Creation ex nihilo, in seminary, and questioning it like any good seminarian, for in the first verses of Genesis, there is reference to the deep, to chaos, as if something existed before creation.  Well I was studying with Dr. Rev. Joe Jones in a study group (a great theologian of the Christian Church), and he made it clear it was less about the existence of matter before creation, but that creation was not made of God’s own self.  That is nothing God created is Divine, we may see something or experience something and say “Wow that is Divine,” however I believe we are pointing to the great Divine with that experience.  God created, to have relationship with, not to simply be an extension of God.  This is however, not to support the gnostic idea that all earthly and physical is inherently evil.  I remember that God said it was Good when it was created, but it is not God.  It is physical and that with life does die.

Thus the fear of the women was the realization that God is truly the only other.  We are all invited to the wedding banquet, as the parable Jesus tells in Mathew 22.  We are all invited and we wear our wedding robe (of course the people on the street did not really have their special robe with them), but when the one not wearing a robe asked he was without word.  He did not understand, he would have stood at the empty tomb and thought “I wonder who took the body?”  He would question the angel and may had experienced fear, but not the fear that sent the women running.

Their fear was that the resurrection did happen.  It meant they would have to deal with their doubt, their sin, their shortcomings to the one that is coming with a winnowing fork.  The one that would separate the chaff from the grain with the help of the Holy Spirit.  To accept you were that loved that Jesus would go to the cross and to face him, is wear the fear comes from, and the hope begins. 

Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. Revelation 3:20

Hope stirs when we realize Jesus does not avenge, but witnesses as the ultimate other.  The one that knows the truth is that forgiveness blooms on earth as it is in heaven. For when Jesus comes through the locked door He says, “Peace be with you.”

Sound the Trumpet

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

There are five parables in this scripture.  The last one about fish talks about the end of the age, and how there will be a judgment.  However, these parables are not about the Kingdom of Heaven coming only at the end of the age, rather that it has come near, now.  While it is true that it is all set with the knowledge of the escahton, that is not the key to the Kingdom.

The first two parables demonstrates the power of the Kingdom of God and how it only needs a little to create is large dominion.  The parable of the leaven that is put into three measures of flour (about 50 pounds), demonstrates the power of God.  The end result is bread, which is what sustains us here on earth.  According to this parable the Kingdom of Heaven is a large quantity of bread, created with a small amount of yeast.  It is a miracle that feeds.  The mustard seed is sowed in the field and grows into a tree that reflects the following Hebrew Scriptures:

The tree that you saw, which grew great and strong, so that its top reached to heaven and was visible to the end of the whole earth, whose foliage was beautiful and its fruit abundant, and which provided food for all, under which animals of the field lived, and in whose branches the birds of the air had nests (Dan 4:20-21)

On the mountain height of Israel
   I will plant it,
in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
   and become a noble cedar.
Under it every kind of bird will live;
   in the shade of its branches will nest
   winged creatures of every kind. (Ezekiel 17:23)
All the birds of the air
   made their nests in its boughs;
under its branches all the animals of the field
   gave birth to their young;
and in its shade
   all great nations lived. (Ezekiel 31:6)

The large tree that represents the Kingdom of Heaven is a home to many.  And even beyond the realm of Israel.  It is a home for everyone now.

The second two parables are about how one comes about experiencing this Kingdom of Heaven that has come near.  The first happens upon it in a field, the second is searching for the greatest pearl, either way, both give their whole financial selves to the field or pearl respectively.  One gives there whole selves when they either stumble on or find what they were searching. 

I have a wonderful story from my life about finding the Kingdom of Heaven, on earth.  This leavened bread, this tree, this treasure, this great pearl, but I don’t know if I was searching or if I stumbled upon it.  I will share the story with you.

I was talking to my dad on the phone when he told me that me nephew was interested in playing the trumpet.  Well I knew there was a trumpet of my dad’s in the attic of his house, I put it there.  See 30 plus years ago my dad brought the trumpet home from his childhood home when I was 7 or 8.  I was excited about it and learned how to blow it some.  Well as a young boy I also found that a marble could be kept rolling around the horn with centrifugal  force.  Often the marble would shot out across the room, but twice it went into the horn.  However, only once did it come out.  I tapped on the trumpet, blew on it, used a long stick, and put a lot of valve oil down all in an effort to free the little white marble from the trumpet.  I did not go to my parents, especially my dad, but I did know how to open the attic and I placed it in the attic.

A few years later I was in fifth grade and all the students were encouraged to be part of the band.  They had older students come and demonstrate the different instruments and we were to write down the three we were interested in.  I put down trumpet, for it what I wanted to play, but I was scared.  I did write down drums as well for I was interested in percussion as well.  The third I put down was sousaphone, because the school provided the instrument, and I could keep the attic door shut.   Well the next week the band leader called me in and asked if I was serious about the sousaphone, apparently it is not popular.  He got me excited about playing that large horn, and I could keep the attic closed. 

Back to the phone conversation with my dad.  He told me he got the trumpet down from the attic and it did not seem to work.  So I said to him, look inside you should find a white marble.  He said “white marble” with me as he must have turned the horn around and then asked, how did you know it was white?  I then shared the story I have shared and we laughed and laughed.  See I was scared of my father when I was young.  I was not abused but I was scared.  He was not always around and I projected his judgment and he certainly provided some.  It was even how I thought of God, for a while.  My relationship with my dad matured greatly, from work we both did. 

Finding that great marble was stumbling on something I knew, that the Kingdom of God is found in the relationships, not our wealth and success.  During the week I was preparing this sermon, a congregant sent me this link:  http://churchwhisperer.com/2011/04/19/41911/

The writer, Blake Coffee, uses the metaphor of the church as a quilt.  A wonderful metaphor that seems to emphasize Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 12:12 “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”  I have used that metaphor as well but what Blake adds is about the stitching.  For a quilt is not simply many pieces laid out in as an image, they are connected by thread.  Those represent our relationships.  What I really enjoyed was the analysis that when an issue hits the church we worry more about the weight of the issue rather than the strength of our relationships.  I should have had confidence in my relationship with my father when I was young, apologized and asked for forgiveness.  I am sure I would have been sounding the trumpet. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is found in those relationships.  We search and stumble upon those relationships and give our whole selves.  Forgiving and being forgiven or in a work Love.  For it is not simply about the end time, or a future time, it is now.  Even if you lost 30 years you can still find the Great Pearl (Marble) in your attic.