The First Modern Man (John 20:19 - 31)

Easter's not over, you know . . . we have another six weeks of it . . . while our more evangelical brothers and sisters have put away the lilies and bonnets until next year, while they're sharpening the blades on the mower and getting ready for Summer we who follow the church calendar are still singing Easter hymns and contemplating the resurrection . . . and that's how it should be, isn't it? Easter is the most important time of year, it's the time when we celebrate the fact that separates us from all other faiths: we worship a risen God, a God who has conquered sin, who has triumphed over death. It's from Easter, from the fact of the resurrection, that we derive that most characteristic of Christian qualities: hope. Hope that this is not all there is . . . hope that – in spite of everything we see and hear – evil is being routed in the world . . . hope that like Jesus, the first fruits of the resurrection, we will be resurrected some day as well.

Hope is our song, our poem, our anthem . . . but after Jesus' death, there wasn't a lot of it going around . . . when we left off last week, Mary Magdalene had seen the empty tomb, but at first she’d thought his body had been taken . . . even after he appeared to her, she thought he was the gardener, until he called her by name . . . and so, as that first resurrection day comes to a close, Mary knows, but no one else . . . Oh, Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, had seen an empty tomb, but it’s unclear just what they thought about it, and even more unclear what they’d gone and told the others. So we don’t know what they thought as they gathered that evening in a Jerusalem house, maybe they were discussing it, trying to decide what to think of the empty tomb . . . John says all the doors were locked, and he says it was for fear of the religious authorities – and suddenly, without warning, Jesus appears and stands before them. Just like that, right through a locked door. And he could have said a lot of things, like "How ya'all doing?" or "Behold! I have returned," but the first words out of his mouth are "Peace be with you."

And he shows them his nail-scarred hands and his sword-pierced side, and they rejoice when they see that it’s him . . . and he says again "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And right here we have John's version of the great commission . . . it's not at his ascension, as it is in Matthew, it's right here in the quiet lamp-light of their gathering place . . . "As God has sent me, so I sent you." The disciples are sent to the world just as Jesus was sent . . . by God, the Creator almighty. And to power them, to animate them and sustain and comfort them as they do the work of God, he breathes on them, literally giving them his spirit, his Holy Spirit . . . and notice again that it's not like the other accounts we have . . . particularly Luke's, where the Spirit comes down upon the disciples in fire and tongues at Pentecost . . . here it's literally the breath of God. Breathe on me, breath of God . . .

I wonder if they saw anything? I wonder if they saw the spirit pass from Jesus into their bodies, into their hearts and minds? Pam and I were at a revival in Mississippi with a friend of ours, a communications professor from State, and it was a Pentecostal revival, and there was a lot of flinging the spirit around . . . and at one point the revivalist threw the spirit with great vim and vigor up into the balcony, and you could hear the folks swooning up there, and our friend turned to us and said "I thought I saw something that time," and I don't know, maybe he did, but I don't think it was like that in the house where the disciples had gathered . . . this seems like the antithesis of the flashy-show-biz spirit, the opposite of the public Pentecost event Luke describes in Acts . . . Jesus breathes on them, quietly, without fanfare, without muss or fuss , and they receive the spirit of God . . .

And this Spirit empowers them to do . . . what? Jesus gives some specifics: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." Whoa . . . sounds pretty serious . . . sounds like the Spirit gives the apostles the ability to forgive sins or not forgive them, as the case may be.

I was having coffee with a guy I know, and the subject got onto the Roman Catholic Church, somehow, and the role of priests . . . and my companion said "I don't need any priest to forgive me," and so I said sweetly – this is before I figured out the absolute futility of these things – I said "have you ever read John 20:23?" and he admitted that he couldn't recall the exact verse, and I heard later from his wife that he went home and read it and was mightily troubled for awhile . . . and rightly so. This is one of the scriptural foundations of the priestly role as confessor/forgiver . . . and one of the reasons the Roman Catholics insist on Apostolic succession. This spiritual gift to forgive and retain sins is limited in their theology to their own priests, who are – according to them – in the direct line of succession from those disciples gathered together on that Easter evening.

Well. There was one of those original disciples, one of the original twelve, who was missing that night, and it was Thomas, who was called not "doubting," but "twin." And the others tell him about it, about the appearance as if by magic, right through the walls of the house, about the nail-scarred hand and the sword-pierced side, and about the Spirit bestowed upon them, light in their master's breath . . . but the Twin refuses to believe unless he sees the hands and touches them and slides his hand on up into that sword-sliced side. And here, of course, is where he got that nickname "doubting," because he refuses to believe unless he's seen it with his own eyes . . . but I think it's kind of a bum rap, myself. I mean, would any of you out there believe if one of your favorite teachers came back to life, and you heard about it from some of your friends who'd been at a dinner party – where there surely was a little wine going around? I can see it now: Andy says "And there we were, chatting away, and all of a sudden there's Ruby, big as life, back from the dead, and she lifts up her shirt and shows us the embalming scars, and the tire marks on her legs . . ." I'd probably feel ol' Andy's forehead, like are you sick or something, man? Just what had you all been smoking, anyway?

I suspect that none of us would believe it if our friends told us of a resurrection . . . and so I don't tend to blame Thomas for not believing just on the testimony of some eyewitnesses . . . In fact, in this respect Thomas is the very model of a modern man, only about seventeen-hundred years too early . . . like us moderns, he demands hands-on proof before he’ll buy into it . . . if he can’t touch it or feel it or put his hand inside of it, he’s not going to believe . . . it’s like he’s a charter member of the show-me state of mind, and of course that’s kind of like who we tend to be . . . especially since the enlightenment, if you can’t prove it scientifically, it didn’t happen . . . if it’s not corroborated by eyewitnesses, if there’s not a physical chain of evidence, you just can’t prove it . . . and in those days of course there was no DNA or fingerprint lab, no C.S.I. Jerusalem, no quirky – yet serious – forensic scientist, who can leap tall hypotheses in a single bound . . . but even Grissom would have trouble with the empty tomb . . . he’d have no problem identifying the grave as Jesus’ – they’d have his DNA from his time in custody – but he’d be looking for a dead body, not a living, breathing human, especially one that looks so different his closest friends can’t even recognize him.

And that’s why all the gospels relate post-resurrection experiences. They’re critical to the Christian tradition. After all, without these appearances, there’s just the empty tomb, with the neatly-folded grave clothes. In the first weeks after the crucifixion we can imagine all kinds of rumors, flying around Jerusalem . . . competing stories about what happened to his body. Bandits took him away, or maybe wild dogs? It could even have been the religious authorities, or the Romans, trying to deny the Christian movement its martyr . . . nobody was looking for a living, breathing resurrected body, even disciples like Thomas, who should have known better . . .

A week after his first appearance to the gathered disciples, Jesus materializes in the upper room again, this time with Thomas present. Once again the doors are locked, and once again – for the third time – he says "Peace be with you" – I guess they don’t call him the Prince of Peace for nothing. He goes right up to Thomas and offers himself up for inspection: "Put your finger here and see my hands; reach out your hand and put it in my side . . . do not doubt, but believe." But Thomas is convinced just by seeing him – and note that in this, he’s no different than the others, who believed when they first got a load of him the week before – and Thomas confesses his faith right on the spot: "My Lord and my God!"

And Jesus, who knows a teachable moment when he sees one, says "Do you believe because you’ve seen? Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe!" And right here is the theological punch line of the whole story . . . the Greek word we translate as "blessed" connotes more than just "fortunate" or "happy" . . . it refers specifically to having favor bestowed upon you by God. And that divine favor is belief in a risen savior . . . Jesus is not saying that you are blessed as a result of believing without seeing, but that you are blessed in that you believe and yet have not seen. Believing without seeing, without touching, without stuffing your hand down inside a sword-riven side, is a blessing, it’s a gift from God.

And what a blessing it is, especially in these skeptical, 21st-Century times . . . and that’s how it’s often preached . . . we’ve been given that ultimate blessing, that ultimate gift of belief without seeing Christ standing before us in the flesh, aren’t we lucky? And yet, is that really true? Do we really not see our risen Lord, all around us? Did he not tell us "I will be in you and you in me?" And so is he not right there, in our friends next to us in the pews, in our brothers and sisters across the aisle? And did he not say “as you do it to the least of these . . . you do it to me?” And so is he not also in the homeless that wander our highways and hedges, also in the abused and neglected children of our suburban and inner-city streets?

If we look at the beaten, if we look at the depressed, if we look at the victims of war and genocide and economic oppression we will see and touch the nail-scarred hands, and we will bury our arms up to the elbows in his wounded side . . . that’s where Christ is, in all the victims, all the scapegoats, all the widows and orphans and children who ever lived. That’s where he is and that’s where he’s always been.

I guess, in a funny kind of way, we’re the reverse of Thomas . . . he saw Christ, he spoke with him and broke bread with him and only then did he believe. We’re given the wonderful gift, the marvelous blessing of belief without all of that, and now we can see. We can see the world the way it really is, we can see – as Calvin might have said – through Christ-colored glasses instead of the lenses of sin . . . we can see the risen Christ wherever we look . . . in our neighbor, in our kin, and in ourselves. Amen.

To Believe or Not to Believe (Easter A; John 20:1-18)

How many of you believe that Jesus was bodily resurrected, just like it says in the gospels? Don't answer that . . . I don't want to embarrass anyone, or make anyone fib . . . The fact remains that the resurrection is consistently one of the major stumbling blocks to belief--notice I didn't say faith--in Christianity. It's one of the hardest things to wrap our minds around, which is why some scholars have recommended--and indeed, practiced their own selves--coming to Jesus through his teachings. Understand his life and what he did, they say, and that will prepare you to believe that he came back from the dead. Or . . . not. Many of these folks never make it beyond the “it's a wonderful life” phase, and value Jesus as a great teacher, and only that.

That is view of participants in the several "quests for the historical Jesus," a term coined by Albert Schweitzer, who besides being a medical doctor, was a pretty fair New Testament theologian. Modern historical Jesus questers include Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, who, modernist that they are, downplay--or downright dispute--the miracles, including and especially the resurrection.

John Shelby Spong, an Episcopal bishop who wrote some books popularizing these ideas, and who a seminary buddy of mine calls Spronngggg, feels that in this modern day and age, belief in the miracles--again including the resurrection--is an embarrassment to Christians, and should be jettisoned, or at least that's the theme of every one of his books. He catalog various ideas about how the resurrection “really” happened, ranging from “his disciples came and carried him off” to “wild dogs ate him” to “it was just a vision and/or a dream.” Ironically, the theory about the disciples stealing him away is the one the scribes and Pharisees put out to discredit the first Christians, according to Matthew.

This difficulty of believing in the resurrection isn't a just a modern thing . . . It was just as hard for the ancients to believe . . . Even the disciples, who had been TOLD that he was going to rise again, had trouble. There's the famous “doubting Thomas,” of course, but each gospel account tells of others who at first disbelieve. In Mark, after Mary Magdalene sees Jesus, she goes and tells “those who had been with him,” i.e., the disciples, but they don’t believe her. In Matthew, although the eleven remaining disciples come to worship at the risen Christ’s feet, some of them doubt, though doubt what we’re not told. In Luke, the Marys and Joanna and “other women” see the empty tomb, run back to the disciples, and tell them; but they aren’t believed, because it seems to be an “idle tale,” which may be 1st century code for one told by women.

Finally, in our passage, Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, race one another to the tomb, after Mary had told them the stone had been rolled away. When they get there, the other disciple gets there first, looks in and sees the empty linens, but doesn’t go inside. When Peter—good old, full-tilt Peter—gets there, he goes inside, sees the linens as well, but also the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head, neatly rolled up and placed aside, away from the other linens in a place all by itself. Finally, the disciple that Jesus loved comes into the tomb, sees and believes.

But here’s the thing . . . just what does the other disciple believe? It can’t be that Jesus was resurrected, because in the very next line we’re told “for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.” And note the beginning of that line “for,” as in “because as yet they did not understand . . . that he must rise from the dead.” The clause about how the other disciple believed is predicated upon the succeeding clause, the one beginning with “for.” It some way or another, the information about not getting that Jesus must be raised again explains or leads to his belief . . . and so I ask again: what was it that he believed?

Well, the most obvious thing is that Jesus is not there . . . that’s the proximate thing, but if that was all it is, why the stuff about not understanding that Jesus must be raised? Well, it could be any number of things, as Bishop Spong has pointed out . . . he could believe that bandits have come and carried him away, for their own nefarious reasons. That wild animals have dragged him off for equally nefarious, but different, reasons. Or, he could believe the Pharisees—and Spong’s—version, that others of his disciples had come along and stolen the body, but surely a disciple as prominent as the one Jesus loved would have heard about it.

Here’s a thought: what if we are misreading John when he uses the verb “to believe?” What if we are taking it in a purely intellectual sense, as in I believe something to occur, when John meant it to be something more? After all, the Greek word for “to believe” and “to-have-faith” are one and the same, and how we translate it—to believe or to have faith—depends on the context, on the words and situation that it is meaning to describe. And almost everywhere you see that word, especially in John, it has something of both meanings in it . . . for John, intellectual belief and faith are inextricably intertwined.

And really, isn’t it that way for us? Except perhaps in the most mundane of situations, perhaps . . . maybe if you’re staring at a piece of clothing someone has on, and you say “I believe that’s green,” but really . . . though we say that, sometimes, what we really mean is certainty . . . I know that it’s green, and there’s a different word in both English and Greek for that . . . but unless it’s right in front of you, isn’t all knowledge contingent? Isn’t all belief the same way? If a person says they believe, say in the Easter Bunny, isn’t there at least a dollop of faith in there? I mean, I presume that they’ve never seen the Easter Bunny . . . and if someone says I believe Aunt Matilda’s coming in at eight, doesn’t that have a large measure of faith about it? After all, her arrival time depends on a whole lot of variables, doesn’t it? Plane schedules, train schedules, traffic . . . Aunt Matilda’s driving ability, perhaps. But how can one say one “knows” something absolutely? Especially if one has never seen or touched or experienced it?

Maybe one can describe the concept of belief/faith as a continuum . . . knowledge on one end, blind faith on the other . . . and perhaps John is telling us that—in spite of not understanding that Jesus was to be raised from the dead—that the disciple that Jesus loved gained at that instant a measure of faith that he didn’t have before, maybe in spite of not understanding the scriptures that said Jesus would be raised again, despite not understanding when Jesus told him—three times!—that he would be killed and raised on the third day, perhaps he gained belief—perhaps way to the right, on the knowledge-faith continuum, far toward the end of faith..

In John’s gospel, Jesus insists, over and over, and in many ways, that belief comes from above, from God, not from anything we see . . . and what we have here is another demonstration of that fact . . . the disciple that Jesus loved does not believe because of that empty tomb, he doesn’t even believe because he saw the linens and the head-cloth, all neatly folded. He believes because God wills it, and what he believes—even though it might not be in the resurrection—was in the person and name of Christ.

And I have no idea why John doesn’t say the same thing about Peter, except that perhaps—just perhaps—it’s a demonstration of exactly what I’ve been talking about . . . Peter sees the same exact thing as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and yet we don’t hear that he suddenly believes . . . and as I said, I have no idea why, except that our God is a mysterious God, whose ways are not our own. Perhaps Peter already had been brought to that level of belief/faith, perhaps God was waiting for some other time, who knows? But the fact that Peter isn’t portrayed as having believed, and it shores up John’s contention that it is not anything that anybody sees—after all, Peter sees the same thing that the beloved disciple sees, but does not come to belief.

Well. The two men scamper back off to their homes, where they have been presumably mourning in private—and away from prying, religious-authority eyes—leaving Mary Magdalene alone, just as she had been that morning when she discovered the stone had been rolled away. And she bends down to look into the tomb, and Lo! There are two men in white sitting in there, and they hadn’t been there before . . . they hadn’t been there when the men were there, and does Mary wonder at that? Does she wonder why the two . . . whatever they were, we’re told they’re angels . . . didn’t appear to the men? After all, men were the religious elite . . . weren’t they? They ran the show, they made the rules. Men were allowed into parts of the temple that women couldn’t go, and only men could be priests or teachers . . . does Mary wonder why these messengers from God appear to her and not to the men?

If she does, she doesn’t have much time to dwell on it, because the angels ask her a question: “Woman,” they say “Why are you weeping?” And she replies: they’ve taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve laid him.” And note well: she isn’t weeping because they had killed him, but because she doesn’t know where he is, she can’t go visit the grave, she doesn’t have a place to locate her grief. She doesn’t have a place she can go on Memorial Day to bring flowers and have a good cry, she doesn’t have a place to go talk to him as if he were still there, as if he were with her.

Because it’s important to know where our dead are, isn’t it? It’s important to have a place to go, a place to be with them, even if you’re a Christian even if, ostensibly, at least, you believe that the person is not there. The multi-billion dollar funeral industry counts on that . . . their funerary parks, their cemeteries of the dead, cater to that desire to know where our dead are . . . because just like Mary, we want to know where they have been laid.

And this brings us back to belief in the resurrection. Christian doctrine is that no matter what happens to us just after we die, we will be resurrected on the final day when, the just Kingdom of God is established on earth. And why is that Christian doctrine, why is it Christian belief? Well, as Paul puts it, Christ’s is the first fruits of the resurrection, the forerunner of us all, who are children of God through Christ. It is our Christian hope, again as Paul says, that we will be raised up just as was Christ.

Notice the word “hope:” Swiss theologian Karl Barth writes that what draws people to worship is an unspoken question, and that question is simply this: “Is it true?” Is it true that God lives and gives us life? Is it true that God established a routine, that we call the laws of nature, and that God broke the routine and somehow raised Jesus from the dead? Is it true that something so extraordinary happened on that morning that we can only rebuild our lives on its foundation?

Friends, this is why it’s called belief, this is why it’s called faith: and why it’s not called knowledge: With the resurrection, God gave us a demonstration of love and forgiveness that was so powerful, so compelling, that it is worthy of faith, and thus doubt. What we proclaim at Easter is too mighty to be encompassed by certainty, too wonderful to be found only within our imaginations’ border. So we continue to question, we continue to doubt, we continue to dig deeper and deeper into our faith, which was born on this day nineteen hundred and eighty four years ago, when we believe and proclaim that Christ the Lord has been raised from the dead. Hallelujah! Amen.

A Most Ingenious Paradox (Matthew 21:1 - 11)

Well, here we are, at the place we arrive every year: Palm Sunday, gateway to Holy Week. Now, if that sounds like a tourist slogan—See! The disciples gathered ‘round the table! Witness! How just a little spilled salt can upset an entire career—if it sounds like a tourist slogan, that’s how we treat Holy Week, as outside observers of a great pageant. And in some ways, that’s not a bad way to think about it. After all, Holy Week is a week of Holy signs, Holy symbolic actions, which we observe every year. And they don’t call it observance for nothing.

And here’s the thing: One of the biggest symbolic actions of all is Jesus’ riding into Jerusalem on that colt and/or donkey. It is an action that symbolizes something. We just have to figure out what it is supposed to symbolize to us.

Right at the outset, it’s clear that Jesus plans and executes it carefully so that it is a symbolic act. He tells his disciples exactly where to go, and what to do when they get there. And what he plans is a messianic entrance to Jerusalem. As theologian James Duke writes, the story, common to all four gospels, “takes place amid the swirl of messianic expectations during the age of Second Temple Judaism.” These expectations were many and diverse, calling for in some cases the violent overthrow of the Roman occupying forces and their Jewish collaborators. Jesus carefully sets the scene so that these messianic expectations are aroused . . . and in the end, subverted as well.

Although the scene is in all four gospels, it is not told exactly the same in each. In particular, Matthew—often considered the most Jewish of the evangelists—wants to make sure his audience really gets it that Jesus is the messianic fulfilment of Hebrew scripture. To that end, his version is the only one that contains what biblical scholars call a fulfilment quotation, which begins with “This took place to fulfil . . .” And the prophecy that it had taken place to fulfil was from Zechariah, who said “Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” That’s why in Matthew—and Matthew alone—Jesus carefully instructs his disciples to go and find two animals: “"Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.” Which the disciples do, and Matthew dutifully tells us, with no apparent irony or sense of incredulity, that Jesus mounts both animals and heads into Jerusalem.

And I’ve always chuckled at this, that Matthew is so literal—or perhaps so, how shall we say it . . . dull . . . that he misses the fact that Zechariah is writing poetically, and the chief attribute of Hebrew poetry is parallelism, the repetition of a lines, in slightly different formats, for emphasis. Thus, when Zechariah says “your king will come, humble, riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” he doesn’t mean the king will ride on two animals, but the line “on a colt, the foal of a donkey” is a poetic repetition of “riding on a donkey,” repeated to emphasize the fact that it will be a donkey. And after all, every donkey is the foal of a donkey, including the one he rode in on.

Over the years, I’ve imagined this scene: Jesus, riding on a donkey and a smaller donkey as well, maybe like a rodeo trick rider, standing with a foot on each, both sets of reigns in hand, or maybe like John Wayne in Stagecoach, stopping a speeding stage by crawling over multiple horses. But just recently, I came across what is now my favorite visualization: a cartoon showing a donkey with a smaller one on his back, and with Jesus sitting on the smaller one’s back, giving a thumbs up sign, and saying “Heeey!” And the poor bottom donkey is saying “I feel stoopid.”

The guy who drew that cartoon, one Thomas Whitley, derides Matthew for this in his blog, saying he “apparently didn’t understand the Hebrew parallelism in the original text . . . Moreover, Matthew apparently didn’t realize the lunacy of saying that Jesus rode both a donkey and a colt simultaneously.” And for a while, I agreed with this rather smug assessment—I know, right? Me, smug?—but something always bothered me about it, always niggled at the back of my mind. If Matthew was a good Jew, if his was the most Jewish of gospels—as scholars, and Whitley, insist—what are the odds that he didn’t understand Hebrew poetry? After all, there are indications that he was well versed in Hebrew literary tropes—such as chiasmata or inclusios—elsewhere in his gospel. Why wouldn’t he understand this very basic feature of Hebrew poetry?

As I puzzled over this, it came to me: what if Matthew understood very well what he was doing? What if he knew all about Hebrew poetry, knew that Zechariah meant only one donkey, and what if he interpreted it literally on purpose? Then the image of Jesus riding awkwardly around on two animals is one he wanted us to have, he wanted us to imagine “circus Jesus,” to picture the absurdity of it all. And then I thought: what a subversive thing to do, and that’s when I became convinced. Because the whole thing is subversive, the whole thing is most ironic. Jesus set the whole thing up to be that way: after all, he’s the one who chose a donkey, the most humble of conveyances . . .

As biblical scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan point out, no King of any worldly state would be caught dead riding into town on a donkey, he’d have a white destrier, a prancing, snorting stallion at the very least. And Borg and Crossan speculate that there indeed was such a ruler riding into Jerusalem that day, on the opposite side of town: they write that the Roman governor Pontius Pilate entered Jerusalem to personally oversee the quelling of any violence that might erupt because of the Passover. And they go so far as to suppose that Jesus set up his entrance to Jerusalem to mock that specific entrance.

Whether or not that is true, Matthew’s account of that entrance both upholds and subverts the messianic expectations of the day, and I think—the most Jewish gospel writer that he was—he deliberately adds just a little extra fillip of ridiculousness to the whole picture. After all, his audience consisted of largely educated, perhaps wealthy, Jews, and they would have no problem picking up on it all . . . they would recognize that the whole thing is a most delicious, a most ingenious paradox, and that it would heighten their understanding and appreciation of just what kind of Messiah they had gotten for themselves.

It’s the same paradox that Paul speaks of so eloquently over in 1st Corinthians: foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews, and indeed it points out just how foolish, and how ultimately ridiculous the rich and powerful rulers are in God's sight. Matthew's picture of a king trying to ride two animals, no matter how humble they are, reminds me of the over-the-top symbolic actions associated with the Hebrew prophets. Take Hosea: god commands him to "take ... a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord." Or Ezekiel who, following God's direction, (a) eats a scroll, (b) makes a model of Jerusalem out of a brick, (c) lies on one side for 390 days and the other for 40, and (d) preaches to the brick. And that’s just one of the actions he is commanded to perform.

Whether Jesus actually rode into two on two donkeys or not--and I suspect that he did not--Matthew seems to have been bent on portraying at least a little of that prophetic over-the-topness. He is having Jesus perform a ridiculous symbolic act that shows the ultimate folly of worldly power.

God's ways are not our ways ... To the world it is foolish to worship a crucified king, one who rode into Jerusalem in triumph on one day, on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, and less than a week later had been murdered, spiked to a crossbeam, in about as painful way a person could die. Because that's the message of this brilliant piece of political theater, and Matthew's equally brilliant portrayal of it. Worldly power is fleeting, it is as ridiculously foolish as a man trying to ride on two donkeys ... A man who, though he is king, son of god, nevertheless rode into town humble, on a beat of burden, like a sack of potatoes.

And the lesson is still sharp today, isn't? Vladimir Putin lets himself be photographed shirtless, muscles bulging, riding a horse. Ronald Reagan cultivated his image as a lone gunslinger, Gary Cooper standing over against the Soviet menace. Talking heads and political opponents castigate a president who doesn't talk tough enough to other nations, using the buzzwords "irresolute," or wishy-washy when what they mean is not war-like, not saber-rattling enough. Franklin Roosevelt hid the fact he was in a wheel chair from the American people because he knew that it read “weak” in the photographs. Or, imagine Barack Obama or George W. Bush riding into Washington on a donkey, lanky feet dragging the ground, smiling and waving to the crowds. What would the talking heads be saying?

World leaders have a distressing way of claiming to be Christian and doing the most unchristian things … you can go on YouTube and find a video of Vladimir Putin, scourge of the Crimea and Ukraine, talking about his baptism. And here in our country—and I will not name names—we’ve had presidents who have gone to church on Sunday and defended water-boarding on Monday, who’ve sung Amazing Grace one day and ordered drone attacks the next.

That's not what Christianity is about. It isn't about the one with the most troops or the better generals winning. It's not about the rich always getting their way. God's way is foolishness to the nations, to the world, and nothing shows it more than Palm Sunday, when the king of the universe rode into town, feet dragging the ground, on a donkey and a colt, the foal of a donkey. Amen.

The Sixth (or Seventh) Sign (John 11:1 - 45)

The second part of the Gospel of John is called the “Book of Signs,” because it seems to be structured around seven—or maybe six—signs. And whether seven or six, it doesn’t matter for our purposes, except to note that this one, the raising of Lazarus, is the final one in that section. And you might well ask—and I’m glad you did—what they are signs of? Well, they’re signs of the Kingdom of God. And so, right off the bat, we’re going to look at that oft-misunderstood concept, which is referred to by multiple names in the Bible, names like “the rule of Christ” or “the day of the Lord” or “the kingdom of heaven.” Reference to this concept are rife in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, and my favorites in the Old are from Isaiah and Micah: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them . . . [the nations] shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

In the New Testament, Jesus tells parables about the kingdom—like the mustard seed growing into a tree with home for all the birds and animals—and there are those six—or is it seven—signs in John, the last of which we just, but nowhere is it more clear than in Luke, where Jesus gives his mission statement which is, of course, to embody the Kingdom: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

Now. What are things all those descriptions have in common? Well, right off the bat, they’re surprising . . . who ever heard of a mustard seed—little, tiny, producing normally a little herb—growing up into a tree? One big enough for all manner of birds to nest? And the laying down with the lamb? Puh-leeeze. The lion fricasseeing the lamb, is more like it . . . but here, in the kingdom of God, the lion and the lamb will lay down together, and you can take that literally, or symbolically, like it was surely intended, but one thing is clear: the lamb, which ordinarily would be dead, is alive.

And that leads us to a second thing in common with these descriptions . . . life arises where seemingly it would not. In the case of the mustard seed, it would normally produce life—in the ancient mind, the seed was considered “dead”—but it produces life overflowing, life abundantly, it makes life—living space and food and nourishment—for the birds of the air. And the lion and the lamb, and interaction which normally produces death, instead—inscrutably and unaccountably—engenders life.

Now. To see where I’m going with this, the first thing I thought of when I read this morning’s lection was the Kingdom of God, and—the Spirit moving in particular ways as it does—in Christian Ed we just happen to be studying discernment, and one of the spiritual disciplines within it is learning to see where the kingdom of God is breaking out around us. In other words, to look for signs of the Kingdom of God. We do this by asking ourselves—and one another—a simple question: where have you seen the Kingdom of God (or the rule of Christ or the day of the Lord or the kingdom of heaven—breaking through into the world? Where have you seen signs of the Kingdom of God?

And one of the things we’ve started to do in session—and I hope committees and boards will join in the fun—is asking ourselves every month “Where have you seen signs of the Kingdom breaking out in the last month.” And as I contemplated this, I imagined how another session meeting might have went, the Session of Brownhills Presbyterian Church of Judea sitting down, and their moderator—a completely handsome, charismatic kind of guy, as are all moderators—asking them “Ok, where have you seen the Kingdom of God breaking out in the past month.” And the elders kind of shrink down in their seats, and shift nervously around, they won’t meet his eye, but finally Fred of Bethany pipes up: “Uh, well . . . I was trudging home one morning after working the swing shift at the tannery—we’d just gotten a big order for Roman bullwhips, and I was dog tired—and I cut through the graveyard—I usually don’t go that way, ‘cause it’s so creepy, all those dead people—but I was tired, so I cut through the graveyard and there was this high keening sound, it set my teeth on edge, and for a moment, I thought all the banshees of Hades were after me, but it turned out to be just ritual weeping, and I thought ‘Cripes, it’s a funeral, the traffic’a gonna be so heavy, and Mildred is gonna be so mad’ . . . she’s always telling me ‘Come right home, Freddie, don’t you dare stop and have one with the boys, and don’t be bringing any of your mangy friends over, either. You don’t make enough at that so-called job of yours for us to be feeding the whole countryside . . . ‘”

And the moderator gently interrupts him “The kingdom, Fred? Where did you see the Kingdom?” and Fred blushes and says, “Oh, yeah . . . well, it turned out it wasn’t a funeral after all, but it’s hard, even now, to say what it was . . . I guess it was the exact opposite of a funeral . . .” “Why do you say that?” asks the moderator. “Because they weren’t putting somebody in a tomb, they were letting somebody out. This . . . guy . . . walked up to a tomb, and it looked like any other tomb, just an eerie hole in the rocks . . . and I could see the stone that the workmen had rolled aside, and this man walks up to the tomb and yelled ‘Lazarus, come out!’ And immediately, I knew what was what, ‘cause that was my cousin Lazarus in that tomb, and I’m thinking ‘Say what??? He’s been in that hole for four days, his spirit has had time to get out of dodge, and he’ll certainly be kind of, ah . . . ripe.’

“And sure enough, I caught a whiff of graveyard stench, and I started down there, fixing maybe to stop that circus, make ‘em leave poor ol’ Lazarus alone, hasn’t he suffered enough, when, in the doorway to the tomb, in that dank hole in the ground, I saw a white smudge, just a little lighter than the surrounding darkness, then it became more and more clear and it was as if the darkness of the tomb turned to day, and the keening and wailing shut off like someone turned a faucet, and my mind was screaming ‘No . . . no . . . this can’t be happening,’ but before my very eyes the blob resolved into a white-bound figure, stumbling into the light, and he would have fallen, but the man—is he a faith healer? An exorcist?—the man caught him in an embrace that was incredibly tender, entirely loving. And the man looked up, and told the crowd ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’ And they did.”

Fred sits for a long time, head bowed, lost in thought, then the moderator says, again gently—for all moderators are gentle—“So why, for you, was this an demonstration of the Kingdom of God?” And Fred looks up, kind of startled, as if he thought it would be self evident: “Well, it surprised the living Hades out of me . . . you hear a lot about resurrection in the final days, in the Day of the Lord, maybe, but you don’t exactly expect to see it coming off the freeway . . . and the last place you expect to see it is in a graveyard. I mean, really: life springing up out of all that death . . . death in the air, death in the dust, death in the very ground and there is life. Unlooked for, unpredicted, unforeseen . . . Life.”

And the other members of the Session of Brownhills Pres of Southern Judea just stared, some transported, some puzzled, but all touched and thinking and feeling the kingdom of God. Amen.