Faith That Can Move Refrigerators

Second Sunday of Easter
March 30, 2008

John 20:19-31

Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


A friend of mine from seminary has established a Facebook group – now this, to the unitiated, is a sort of Internet club where you don’t really meet anybody and you don’t really do anything but show up. Kind of like a junior high dance, to my recollection.

Anyway, his Facebook group is called “People Willing to Help George [Baum] Move His Refrigerator.” Several people have signed up, some of them because George has implied that beer will be served at said refrigerator-moving.

My favorite part is this: George doesn’t own a refrigerator. But he may one day, and I suppose it helps to plan ahead. Mostly, it’s a fun way of asking: “What kind of friend are you?” Are you the refrigerator-moving kind, even if there is no free pizza and beverages as a reward?

Speaking as a person who just spent the past week moving, refrigerator-moving friends are not only useful people, they’re good people, and they’re the best of friends.

The disciples who followed Jesus, they weren’t perfect friends. Not to each other, not to Jesus. They were known to quarrel about who would sit at the right and left hand of Jesus in heaven. There was a bit of the “fair-weather friend” quality to most of them. Most melted away during the Crucifixion. Even Peter denied Christ three times.

And there is Thomas. Thomas believed in the Christ – he was one of the disciples chosen by Jesus to follow him and to go out to preach and heal in his name. And he did all that. Tradition tells us that after the Resurrection events, Thomas became a foreign missionary and went as far as India to found churches, which flourish there to this day.

But at the time, Thomas had his doubts. The Resurrection seemed too fantastic a story. Like the others, he never really understood when Jesus would talk about going up to Jerusalem to die and rise again for our sins. What seems obvious in retrospect to us, seemed cryptic to those around Jesus at the time.

So when his friends came to him with the news that they had seen the Lord, he did not know what to think. It wasn’t as if he could be expected to look at his watch and say, “Oh that’s right, it’s time for Jesus to be back!”

It’s not that he doubted Jesus’ ability to return. And it’s not that he disbelieved anything that Jesus had taught. It’s just that when presented with the fullness and awesomeness of the teachings of Jesus, he could not comprehend them in full. He knew Jesus could heal and raise the dead—he had seen this with his own eyes.

He probably had no idea that when Jesus said he would rise again, he really meant here and now and in a way that you could see and hear and touch. So rather than take the word of his friends, he was content to continue in his grief at the loss of Jesus. Unless … unless they could prove their word.

Unlike some of us who are so bullheaded that we stick to our opinions despite new evidence – I’m not naming names, but I tend to be one of them. Unlike us, Thomas was willing to drop his skepticism. He held onto his Lord – literally and figuratively.

And he went belief one better. He said, “My Lord and my God!” Terms used for Jesus like the “Son of Man” are often disputed by scholars. What exactly did such terms mean, especially to those hearing Jesus?

Such points can be debated, but not this one: “My Lord and my God!” There is no question that Thomas was saying Jesus was God on earth. Not just a prophet. Not just a relative of God or a favored being.

No. When it came down to the question of whether Thomas would stick with Jesus, he answered unequivocally: “My Lord and my God!”

As John the Evangelist writes, this has been “written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” Life in his name means life everlasting, as the only name given for health and salvation is the name Jesus Christ.

But how are we to live in this life in this world? How are we to be a friend to Christ in this life? That is the point of today’s collect:

“Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith.”

How are we to show our faith in our lives?

Through our baptism, Christ calls us to life with him – by Christ and in Christ and with Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Whenever we renew our baptismal vows, we make some promises that outline some of the ways that we say we will live in Christ.

* We promise to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.
* We promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves, and
* We promise to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.

Big promises, and big promises are hard to keep in big ways. The failures of the disciples teach us that even they didn’t keep all the big promises in big ways. But as Thomas and the others have shown us, even the big promises are possible to keep in small ways.

I’ve been thinking of those promises in the context of two friends of mine. These are refrigerator-moving friends, to me and – most importantly – to Christ.

Jeremy and Penny Lucas have been named missionaries from this Diocese and our national Church. They are leaving Alabama very soon for Namibia, a hot and parched land in southwest Africa.

I’ve known Jeremy and Penny for several years. He was a senior at General Seminary when I was a first-year student, and he was a kind and supportive friend to me.

Jeremy is a former lawyer and is, for a little while more, rector of St. Timothy’s Church in Athens. Penny is an Etowah County girl and a highly capable nurse practitioner. They have been influenced in their missionary goals by Bill Yon, a retired priest in our Diocese who in the 1970s was himself a missionary in Namibia. He helped to train a generation of priests in theology, both academic and practical.

Those priests are retiring and it’s time for another teacher, another friend to help the Namibian Church raise up a new generation of priests and lay leaders. Jeremy will be a canon in the cathedral and a theological teacher in the church. Penny will put her considerable health care and managerial skills to use in programs through the church.

The Lucases have made a big promise that they’re keeping in a big way – moving to the ends of the earth to be friends of Christ, followers in the Way, striving for justice and peace among all peoples.

On Wednesday night, we will move our 5:30 service to Grace Church in Anniston to worship with our friends and then meet and break bread Jeremy and Penny, to hear about their mission plans, and to learn about the needs of our Namibian brothers and sisters.

I’ll be there in the role of keeping my promises in small ways. I’ll be there to ask how I can be a friend, what I can do to support their mission, how my small part can be put with other small parts and become a mission that will grow the African Church and bring health and salvation to more and more.

And I’ll be there to see an amazing sight: How a friend, a refrigerator-moving friend, can move the world.

Holding On, Letting Go

Easter Day
March 23, 2008

John 20:1-18


On this Easter Day, I’ve been thinking about a classic holiday movie: “Groundhog Day.” Not exactly what you think of as a holiday classic. Not “Easter Parade” or “White Christmas” or … well, “Halloween,” I suppose.

It’s not because it’s about a holiday, but because this movie is about holding onto a particular point in time. Bill Murray, if you don’t remember, plays a weather forecaster who is stuck – stuck in a job he thinks he doesn’t like, stuck with an outlook on life that nobody likes, and stuck in a rut of singleness that he doesn’t even realize he’d like to get out of.

So by some magic that never is explained, he becomes stuck in one day – Groundhog Day, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. And he hates it, hates it, hates it, over and over and over. For countless repetitions. He tries to amuse himself by robbing banks and going on drunken benders and all sorts of things that disaffected men would dream up. I’m sure disaffected women would dream up another set of troubles to get into.

The movie ends happily, as you’d expect, with him learning some life lessons and being freed from that day – freed, even though it had turned into a fabulous day for him.

I’ve been thinking of that movie because of that theme – holding onto one moment. A friend said to me recently, “Remember when…” You’ve had those “remember when” conversations. She said, “Remember when we were all together on that trip … I wish we could just go back to being like that.” She was referring to a small group of friends. We would go to parties and have dinner with one another and generally enjoy one another’s company. In retrospect, it was a magical time. But it couldn’t last – nothing in this life lasts exactly as it has been.

We talked about that time, a time that from my friend’s perspective was so much better than things later became. I’m convinced that she wouldn’t trade now for then. For one thing, now she loves her job and back then she was stuck in a position she had long outgrown. And that couple we so adored – well, they weren’t meant for a life together, and the seeds of that discontent were apparent even in that magical time in Memphis. Things weren’t so perfect for any of us back then.

We can’t turn back the clock, though there are times that I’d love to. We all have moments we wish we could hang onto. Mine involve being a kid riding my bike all over the city of Cullman. Of going on a honeymoon and rambling all over the Venezuelan Andes. Of going to Jerusalem just a month ago and gazing out over the Holy City from a high church tower, listening to the Muslim calls to prayer echo over those ancient stones and watching Christian pilgrims heading to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built atop Golgotha, built right on top of the tomb where Jesus was laid.

Those were magical moments in my life. None of which I can hang onto, but which I cherish in my heart. Not just as memories, but as moments that form who I am today. You have your moments, we all do.

Those who knew Jesus – you know they had their moments.

When Jesus was pulled from the Cross and laid in the tomb, his friends and family and followers already had been knocked senseless. His most ardent disciples had been shocked into denying him. Some of his followers, who had welcomed him into Jerusalem by waving palms, had turned against him and called out, “Crucify him!” Only a few stood by the cross, and they were grieving.

In their grief, you know that they were thinking: “If only I could have held onto him. If only this could somehow be undone. If only … if only.” But there was no turning back time. The Messiah had come and gone. The Christ had been crucified. Jesus was in the tomb. It would never be the same again.

When Mary Magdalene reported that the tomb was empty, Simon Peter and the beloved disciple reacted as only men would – they staged a footrace to see who could get there first. And then, before processing what this could mean, they race back to spread the news, whatever that news seemed to suggest.

But Mary Magdalene, who loved Jesus as part of a close circle of followers, Mary stayed and wept. Jesus had died, gone out of her life. Now Jesus was gone in another way – physically absent, stolen from the tomb. That just pounded home the message that he was gone forever. So she wept.

And the angels said, “Woman, why are you weeping?” A strange question, to be sure, since surely they knew. As angels, they are messengers of God. Angels are sent to tell us of God’s actions, not to quiz us. But they asked, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

A rhetorical question because they knew the answer was before her.

She turned to see a man – the gardener perhaps? – and he said the same thing: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”

Again, a question. Another tug at her heart.

To put her at ease, he simply says, “Mary!” With one word, all her fears are allayed. All her questions are answered. She is made whole.

“Mary!” – And she says, “Rabbouni! – Teacher!”

The tomb was empty and she was afraid she had lost Jesus forever. But here he was.

Mary! Teacher!

Her heart leapt with joy. Here was Jesus. It was all right. Things could be like they used to be. Things would be like they used to be. So she reached out. She reached out for her Lord and, to her surprise, he said: “Do not hold onto me.”

There was no turning back the clock. Here was Jesus, but in a different, unrecognizable visage. Jesus was here but untouchable. Here, but not as before.

“Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” Do not hold on to me.

This was new, new for her and new for the world. Jesus had returned, but things would not be the way they used to be. Nothing would be the way it used to be, for Christ had changed the world.

It’s not clear from the texts why Mary Magdalene and others couldn’t recognize Jesus by sight alone. It’s not clear how long Jesus was with them before the Ascension. What is clear is that nothing was the same because the world was made new again.

Mary was made new again. Now, she was the evangelist. Instead of reaching out to hold onto the Lord, she was spreading the Gospel, the Good News of his resurrection. “I have seen the Lord!”

She had seen the Lord, and through the Eucharist that he left with the disciples, she could experience the Lord again and again. By merely repeating what she had seen and heard, she set in motion a chain of events that brings us to this very church today.

What a miracle that was. I don’t mean the Resurrection, but rather its immediate impact on Mary and the impact she and the disciples would have on others, on us. They weren’t knocked senseless forever. They didn’t cling to the past forever. They heard his voice and believed all over again. They saw the Risen Lord and believed anew.

In a moment, we will gather at the table to meet the Lord. Not in the way Mary and the disciples knew Jesus before Calvary. But as the Risen Christ, who is with us, who calls us by name. Hear. Taste and see.

Come, I invite you. And then let go and go forth. Go out into the world and tell of what you have heard and what you have seen. Tell the greatest truth ever told. Say, like Mary Magdalene, “I have seen the Lord.”

Death, Grief, and Love

Good Friday
March 21, 2008

John 19:1-19:42

“They stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them; they cast lots for my clothing.” (Psalm 22:17)

Jesus is hanging on the cross, and at his feet were Roman soldiers acting as if he already were dead. Each soldier took something from him as his own, his booty, a small benefit for the unpleasant task of playing guard at execution. When it came to his tunic, they decided it would be a waste to tear up a perfectly good tunic. So they left it intact and cast lots for it – or drew straws or whatever one did back then to settle things. And so his inheritance was divided.

As the soldiers cast lots, Jesus hung over their heads, his life draining from him. And as they split up his meager belongings, Jesus looked down and said to the Virgin Mary: “Woman, here is your son.” He looked to the beloved disciple and said, “Here is your mother.”

His dying concern was that his mother would be cared for, that in her grief and loneliness she would have someone to look after her needs and to console her.

We all have experienced this in our lives in one way or another, or at least seen it at work in other families. Someone is dying. Perhaps lying in a hospital bed, perhaps at home, but experiencing the cross wherever they are. The end of life has come or is coming, and there is a swirl of concerns and emotions.

The family worries about arrangements: How do you make funeral arrangements? Can we afford it? What about the hospital bills, the medicine and bedside care? Who and how to sort through all that?

The friends worry about the family: Do they need anything? Can I bring a casserole, or will I just be in the way? Can I sit with the dying person so the caregivers can take a break? Or should I wait to be called?

And the dying person also has worries: Am I really dying? What if I don’t want to die? What if I don’t say everything I need to say, bid farewell to all those I should? What if I don’t have the energy or the wisdom to say I love you.

So many worries. And we don’t always concentrate on the right things. Tempers get short. Those who have been caregivers may have run out of steam, run out of ideas, run out of patience. And they can’t be blamed, though it’s easy to misunderstand them at a time like this.

Friends and neighbors can be well-meaning but often say and do inappropriate things. I remember a friend with a terminal illness who was the mother of a 15-year-old. An acquaintance asked her, “Since you won’t be here, have you already planned your daughter’s Sweet 16 party? It’s important.” That person thought she was being helpful but …

You see, we often get our priorities out of whack in times of crisis. And a death is a time of crisis – a time of pain for the survivors, a tearful good-bye no matter how well-lived a life that is being remembered. And it is a time of transition from this world to the next – a glorious move, but as we all know, any transition, any change is difficult. Even the smallest good-bye brings pain.

And so, with our priorities out of whack, we sometimes turn on one another – and forget the love that we are commanded to have for one another.

We squabble over inheritances, no matter how large or small. Who gets the silver, who wants that chair, who was promised the chifforobe?

We’ve all seen it. Perhaps we’ve been a part of it. That chair or that setting of china – it won’t change our lives. It’s probably just acting out. Unresolved conflict among brothers and sisters. Maybe a show of rebellion that’s been bottled up since adolescence. As with the soldiers, it may be a sign of indifference – that this death is so meaningless that material things, the baubles and trinkets of this life, are more important than the human emotion swirling about us.

Or maybe it’s just grief. Grief that doesn’t know how to show itself. Grief that grabs us and won’t let go, won’t let us be who we really are, who we want to be. So the grief makes us act in ways that make us ashamed later, when we’ve calmed down. Grief can make us say harsh things, or maybe make us say nothing at all. Grief can make us forget who we love or why we love or that we love at all.

There is no one proper way to grieve. There is no one way to handle the passing of life – our own, or those of our loved ones.

That is why the example of Jesus is so important to us. He knew death was coming, that nothing could be done to avoid it – yet still, he asks his Father if this cup could pass from him. It’s natural for us to want to put off death – our own deaths, the deaths of those whom we love.

And it’s important for us, like Jesus, to accept the will of the Father and drink the cup that is handed us. Not with joy, not with eagerness, but with the understanding that we all shall pass and that it will bring grief. To us, to our loved ones. And that reluctance and grief are not sins, but human emotions appropriate to our condition.

So it is right and proper for us to contemplate Christ on the Cross. To contemplate his knowledge that those around him suffered with him and for him. His compassion for those who suffered, even though most of the world looked on with indifference. Even though the most important death in all of creation was taking place, the world went on, uncaring and unmoved.

Yet Jesus, wrenched with pain, looked down and cared for his mother. “Woman, here is your son.” And he looked down to the disciple whom he loved and said, “Here is your mother.”

The Romans cast lots for his clothing. They gave him sour wine to drink. But when he said, “It is finished,” he said it with love on his lips.

I Led Three Lives

Maundy Thursday

March 20, 2008

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

When I was a child I read a Cold War-era book called “I Led Three Lives.”

I’ve often though that would make a good title for my autobiography, if I were to be so bold as to write one. I’ve never been a double-agent, like the subject of the original book, but I have had three careers. First, as a newspaper journalist beginning in high school. Then, after graduate study, a college professor specializing in media history. Now, as you can see, I am a priest in God’s one holy, catholic, and apostolic church – a cure of souls, and a preacher of the Gospel.

These three professions have something in common: a search for the truth. Not the absolute, overwhelming TRUTH, but the best that can be found with our faculties. The journalist seeks out the who, what, when, where, why, and how. The historian asks, what is the historical situation, what is the context? And the priest asks, where is the good, where is the evil, where is God in all this?

All three seeking the greater truth, sometimes the Truth with a Capital-T. And we never get to it. Little bits here and there, but we’re only human – even us priests. Especially us priests. It is a lifelong effort to resist the temptation to think that the Truth is within our grasp.

When I was a college professor, I found myself amidst a peculiar mix of people, of time, and place. I was interested in teaching my classes and conducting my research. The university and department that I was in were very interested in waging battles against one another. As a team player – and after all, I’d claimed to be one in my job interview – as a team player I was expected to pitch in and fight.

This was a time of great anxiety for me. I loved my students, respected my departmental colleages, and heartily disliked the university administration and Board of Trustees. It’s not nice to admit, but those are the facts. I boiled when one of my superiors would look me in the eye and say one thing, then go and do the direct opposite. I didn’t feel that I could trust anyone. And I, being a good team player, came to the logical conclusion that I was on the side of Right and Good. My superiors were on the side of Wrong and Evil. I was convinced that they were out to do us harm and were succeeding.

I didn’t like feeling this way. Resentment is a wasting disease. During this time, I went to bed every night with this prayer: “Lord, help me to cast bitterness from my heart.”

I meant every word of that prayer – but honestly, I wanted it to be answered in a way that would let me win and them lose. But still, I prayed it: “Lord, help me to cast bitterness from my heart.”

One day, I saw a book on my shelf and said, “Rich, you bought that book years ago and still haven’t read it. Why don’t you pick it up and read yourself to sleep with it?” As you can imagine, anxiety was interfering with my rest and sleep.

So I picked it up and read it. It was an autobiography, “The Education of Henry Adams.” Henry Adams was many things in his life, notable even at his birth as the grandson and great-grandson of Presidents John and John Quincy Adams. In his life story, I was struck by the time he had spent in England during the American Civil War.

Adams’ father was the American ambassador to Great Britain during much of the war, and Adams served as his father’s personal secretary, giving him a front row view of the diplomatic end of the war. Britain could see some advantage in a Confederate victory, considering arms sales, cotton supplies, and other important political and economic factors. Adams knew this and resented the British for their position.

He looked at the decisions of the Prime Minister, of the Foreign Secretary, of Parliament and saw self-interest, duplicity, and treachery. He saw eagerness to support the Confederates even when being looked in the eye with promises that Britain would not recognize the Confederate government. Adams was wrenched with bitterness and anxiety at the British politicians and their misdeeds.

Then he says that after the war had passed and, indeed, some of the major players passed, he had a chance to look at events in better context.

He was able to read the papers of Lord Palmerston and others and he found himself surprised. He had viewed their actions purely through the lens of the War and the Union position. He did not realize at the time the complex forces at work in every political decision. Domestic politics, economic pressures, and more. What he saw as actions aimed at the heart of the American cause often were simply byproducts of other disputes, of other political fights. This was an important lesson in the education of Henry Adams. He felt chastened.

And I, as my evangelical friends would say, I was convicted. I saw in that story my own story – my own inability to consider the pressures on others, the context in which they live, that my personal happiness or misery was not their intent. I could not with any honesty attribute treachery to their motivation – and indeed, I could not attribute any motivation at all. I could evaluate the actions themselves, but the intent, the motivation had to lie outside my consideration. My access to the truth – big or little T – my access to the truth was too limited.

And I found I could sleep. It was amazing how that prayer was answered. I still thought that the things the administrators were doing were boneheaded and wrong. But I no longer considered them evil. I began to enjoy my job more, and I slept soundly.

On the night before he died, Jesus was at table with friends. He broke bread with them and shared the cup. He washed their feet as an example of humility and service. And he did this knowing all the while that one of those friends would betray him. As he washed their feet, he said, “And you are clean, though not all of you.”

He said this because he knew that the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. St. John the Evangelist tells us that Judas was a petty thief, but taking a few coins is different than taking a life. John explains, then, that it was Satan who had entered into Judas. The other disciples did not know this, and for all we know they went to their grave never understanding why their colleague had betrayed Jesus, and had betrayed them.

It is hard to know what to make of Judas. We know his treachery – but all along, Jesus had said it was the will of his Father that he go to Jerusalem, where he would be raised up. And the result of this betrayal? Christ died, Christ was buried, and rose again. Jesus died for our sins, and whoever believes in this – whoever believes in him will have life everlasting. It’s a strange, strange story that such apparent treachery would have such everlasting positive implication for all our lives.

We do not have the full truth of what happened inside Judas. Why it was he that betrayed Jesus and not Peter or Andrew or John. Whether the Father allowed Satan to enter Judas, whether Jesus recognized evil when he saw it, or merely knew what was inevitable. We don’t know.

What we do know is that there is truth –truth with a little T—that we don’t know. About Judas. About those around us. About whether there is evil at work, or if there is simply complexity that we’ll never understand. About what goes on in the hearts of those with whom we disagree.

We don’t know about those things. And too much worry about them will lead to anxiety. To loss of sleep. To a hardening and darkening of our own hearts.

What we do know is that there is one source of truth – truth with a capital T. That Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. That he commands us to love one another – not understand, not agree with – but to love one another.

That is Truth. And in truth there is love.

Amen.