Jesus said ….
I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.
(From the Daily Office Readings, April 20, 2012 – John 16:1-4a)
The early members of the church were prepared, I think, to be separated from the synagogue, to be cast out from Judaism, and to take the major step of becoming adherents of a new and distinct religion. The church members of the first few centuries were, I think, prepared to be persecuted, killed, martyred. Through their witness and the strength of their faith, the church overcame that separation and that persecution to become the most powerful institution in Western Europe; it was prepared to do that. That was, of course, a mixed blessing and there is a lot of historical debate about and some warranted condemnation of the church’s record as the established religion of empires and kingdoms. However, for 2,000 or so years the church, faced with and prepared for either persecution or power, flourished. ~ What the church was not and still is not prepared for is to be relegated to the sidelines, to be treated with indifference, to be seen as irrelevant to the lives of the people it is charged to reach (I’m thinking “Great Commission” here – Matthew 28:16–20). In other words, the church is not prepared for the contemporary, so-called post-modern world which it, in many ways, has helped to create. A recent book, The Millenials (B&H Books, 2011), claims that 70% of those born between 1980 and 2000 consider the church irrelevant to their lives. Meanwhile, Diana Butler Bass and others are writing about the increase in the numbers of those who call themselves “spiritual but not religious.” It’s not the church’s message that is irrelevant; it’s the way the church has been packaging and presenting that message. ~ So what do I mean by that? In terms of this little squib from John’s Gospel, what I am saying is that the church has forgotten what Jesus told us. We remember what he said about bread and wine; we remembered in those early centuries what he said about persecution; but we have forgotten what he said about irrelevance. And now you’re asking, “What did he say about that?” I’m thinking this morning of the time he sent the disciples out in pairs saying to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money – not even an extra tunic.” (Luke 9:3) They were to enter each situation without preconception, without preparation based on prior notions of what was needed, what might be “relevant”. They were to face each new situation as it presented itself on its own terms . . . and deal with it. The church has forgotten that. Instead, we’ve loaded ourselves up with all sorts of baggage, with theologies, with liturgies, with buildings, with structures, with music, with . . . the list goes on and on and on . . . ~ When I was getting my MBA one of the case studies concerned a buggy-whip manufacturer in the early 20th Century. Facing the possible competition from the newfangled motor-car manufacturers, the buggy-whip maker spent much time and effort improving his product and his manufacturing efficiency … and promptly went out of business when the automobile made horse-drawn conveyances, and thus buggy-whips, irrelevant. If the buggy-whip manufacturer had rethought things, he might have concluded that he was not in the buggy-whip business but rather in the business of making devices for transportation. Doing so, he might have changed his product line and his marketing strategies, and been able to survive the challenge of the new economy and make the transition into a new era. ~ The newspaper industry has faced a similar situation in the past two decades. The daily newspapers have had to ask themselves whether they are in the “print media” business or the “news” business. Those who answered that question appropriately have moved into the internet and other electronic media; those who didn’t, are out of business. ~ What “business” is the church in? Are we in the “religion” business? Yes, but what is the broader context of that business? Is it not the wider world of the “spirituality” business? I think those who say they are “spiritual but not religious” are saying something akin to the transportation consumers of the early 20th Century who basically said “We are moving, but not in horse-drawn buggies.” ~ It’s time for the church to remember what business we’re in and what Jesus told us: “Take nothing into your new situation, no buildings, no music, no systematic theologies, no liturgies, no ‘we’ve always done it this way before’.”
If you’ve been with us here for the services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, or have been following the sermons on line, you know that we have come to Act Three of the three-act drama of redemption. In the first act, we saw the protagonist, Jesus of Nazureth, trying one last time make his disciples understand his mission and his message. Through the metaphor of bread and wine, through the enacted parable of foot-washing, through an agonized night of prayer in a garden, he tried to teach them that his was a mission of love and life, but they just didn’t seem to get it. As the curtain fell on Act One, he was being taken away to be questioned by Jewish and Roman authorities and the disciples, frightened and confused, were scattering, unsure of what was going to happen next.
Some time in the late Fourth Century, St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople and an important Early Church Father known for his eloquence in preaching and public speaking (hence, the surname Chrysostom which means “golden-mouthed”), preached this sermon on Easter. 
Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
In the beginning he had been tempted by riches, by power, by idolization; all these had been offered in the desert. Now how great the temptation must have been to simply give up! Poet Denise Levertov ponders this allure in her poem Salvator Mundi: Via Crucis
In this second act of the drama all that has gone before is recapitulated; all that we saw in yesterday’s first act, the supper in the upper room, the act of servanthood taught there, the agonized prayer in the garden, the willing surrender to unjust authority, and more. Not just yesterday’s first act, but all that has gone before from our first act of defiance in the first garden. Poet Ross Miller reminds us of that bond in his brief verse entitled Tau
A meal is in progress… Is it a seder, the ritual meal of remembrance of the Passover? We don’t really know; the playwrights have not made this clear; the theater critics, the scholars debate this issue. Three of the story-tellers suggest that it is but the fourth, John, tells the tale very differently. (The synoptic gospels tell the story in a similar way and, if truth be told, in the same way – Luke and Matthew based their stories on Mark’s, so to be honest there aren’t three stories, there’s only one that would make us think that this supper is a seder, but John doesn’t. In fact, John doesn’t even care about that – he spends no time at all describing the meal, for him the important thing is what happened afterward, and that comes in a later scene. So as we begin this three-day, three-act drama of redemption, since we have heard Luke’s voice narrating the story, let’s just assume that what we see in this first scene of the first act is, indeed, a seder.)
The meal is over, the dishes have been cleared. The disciples are arguing among themselves about who is the greater among them. Jesus looks frustrated and troubled; the teachable moment has passed and they clearly have not understood! They just haven’t gotten it.
“Stay here,” he tells them, “Stay awake while I go over there to pray.” As they settle themselves, he moves away from them, and collapses in a heap, sobbing: “O God … Father, let this pass!” 
Act One, Scene One – Location: an upper room somewhere in Jerusalem. 
I’m taking a week away from doing the meditations on the Daily Office Lectionary. During Holy Week there are simply too many other things to get done. I’ll be back with more meditations on bits of the Daily Office readings after Easter.
We have just read the simple, yet dramatic story of our Lord’s Passion as related in Mark’s Gospel. But we began our worship this morning with John’s story of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In the span of a few minutes we covered an entire week at the end of Jesus’ earthly life. Logic and reason cannot really make sense of this, and no ten-minute homiletic exegesis of these texts can help us comprehend the enormity of those events. 
Why is Moses angry at Pharaoh? Moses (and God) have put the Egyptians through a series of miserable plagues. The people of the Nile valley have lived through water turning to blood killing all life in the river; invasions of frogs, lice, and flies; livestock diseases; painful, unhealing boils; hail and thunder; locusts; and unnatural darkness. Throughout the course of this series of events, there have been many times when Pharaoh seemed on the verge of releasing the Hebrews but then “the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the sons of Israel go.” (Exod. 10:20) ~ Over the years, I’ve read a lot of commentary on this passage, the introduction to the slaughter of the first born which is context of the Passover. Wesley opined, “Moses hereupon was provoked to a holy indignation, being grieved, as our Saviour afterwards, for the hardness of [Pharaoh’s] heart.” Well, yeah, but who’s responsible for that? Over and over again the Scripture tells us it was God who hardened Pharaoh’s heart! Pharaoh’s not just obstinate, he’s manipulated into stubbornness by God himself! Why be angry at Pharaoh? ~ I don’t really think he is. I think he was mad at God…. ~ I think it’s OK to be mad at God. We have the freedom to express and respond to that emotion, to own up to our occasional anger with God. When parishioners come to me and “confess” being angry at God, I tell them it’s OK, that God is a big boy and can take their anger. The issue to be addressed is whether they can! Can they pray their anger honestly? Prayer is not always peaceful and serene and believing that ought to be can be a real obstacle to faith. But praying out one’s anger is unfamiliar territory; it feels awkward; it’s not much like any prayer we hear in church. ~ Do you remember the episode of The West Wing in which Pres. Bartlett’s secretary was killed by a drunk driver? Her funeral was held in the Washington National Cathedral (an Episcopal church, by the way). After the funeral, Bartlett stays behind in the quiet privacy of the cathedral to offer a personal prayer to God … not out of sadness or faith or hope. His prayer is offered out of anger. He begins by calling God a “son of a bitch” and a “feckless thug.” Then, good Roman Catholic that Josiah Bartlett was, he continued in Latin. Here’s what he said: “Am I really to believe that these are the acts of a loving God? A just God? A wise God? To hell with your punishments. I was your servant here on earth and I spread your word and I did your work. To hell with your punishments and to hell with you!” No amen – just a cigarette stamped out on the cathedral floor, after which Bartlett stalked out. Pretty clearly “in hot anger he left.” Praying our anger is not like any prayer we (usually) hear in church. ~ Scripture doesn’t tell us what Moses did in or with his anger, but we do know what followed. The story of Moses’ “hot anger” and what followed it affirms for us that anger, even anger at God, need not be destructive. It can be the source of a rebirth of hope; it can heighten our confidence in the future, and empower us to undertake the creation of a new reality. Appropriately and creatively channeled, anger, even anger at God, can lead us out of bondage and into freedom.
