Readings for Easter Day, April 21, 2019

• Isaiah 65:17-25  
• Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24  
• Acts 10:34-43  
• Luke 24:1-12

"Reported," Pastor Fred
The long awaited ‘report’ was released with great anticipation. Some found it to be empty.  Others terrifying.  Still others couldn’t be bothered, and called it an ‘idle tale.’ One changed his mind, circled back and took another look inside. 
 
The redacted Mueller report was released this past week, and it had as many different responses and reactions, as the report of the resurrection by the followers of Jesus, on Easter morning! 
 
But I suspect you didn’t come here this morning to hear more about the Mueller Report!  ‘God knows,’ we all need a break from that! 
 
But the many, and various responses to the empty tomb, even in this short gospel account are notable: the confusion and consternation, and then fear, that the women had – who were the first witnesses at the tomb.  And then there is the ‘casual prejudice’ of the 12 male apostles, in their dismissal of the report, from Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women, as ‘an idle tale.’  And finally, the second thoughts of Peter, who ran to the tomb to see for himself, and was amazed!  Such a wide range of emotions. 
 
It is, not unusual, that any of us, then or now, should have so many, and various reactions, to what Easter means!  What we understand the message, of ‘the two men in dazzling clothes,’ means for us, is normal.  It’s the way it is, anytime we receive jarring news and share important events. 
 
What we’re going through as a country, is not normal, in terms of the constant negative news and threats to our Constitutional way of life.  What the women and men disciples of Jesus went through, was also, not normal.  Yet it was also different, when some weeks later, as they processed this news, after the celebration of Pentecost on the 50th day, they came to understand it as, very ‘good news.’  And the Good News of the gospel message, was that God, in Jesus, had offered a rescue to us, personally and collectively.  Offered an opportunity to reach for, and match, our most noble desires in life, to live in unity and equity, to realize a new way of infusing peace and justice into our lives and world – through the courageous faith of Jesus the Christ.  
 
“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” 
 
When I lived in rural Upper Michigan, when I was first a pastor, one of our churches was in a small town called Amasa, a community where, ‘everybody knew everybody.’  The town was on one side of Highway 141, and on the other side was their cemetery.  But that too, was a little community, and an extension of the town! 
 
On every All Saints Day, while we were there, we started a tradition of carrying votive candles into the cemetery after dark, to place on grave stones of their loved ones.  So many memories!  So many stories!  It was a whole village of people they knew.  Aunts and uncles, mothers, fathers and grandparents, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and even children.  The cemetery was full of memories, that were sparked by the names and dates etched in the tomb stones that marked where they had been laid to rest, and filled the lives of our Amasa congregation, almost as full, as the new memories they continued to make. 
 
The women were perplexed, the Gospel of Luke says, when they entered the rock hewn tomb, dark, save for the early morning light trickling in through the low cut door.  We can imagine their confusion – what to do with all those spices they had carefully, and mournfully, prepared the day before?! 
 
But what made them ‘terrified,’ and ‘bow their faces to the ground,’ was the sudden apparition of two men in dazzling clothes!  When these angels suddenly appear, their puzzlement is interrupted, and they’re understandably fearful!  Who wouldn’t be!?!
 
But it’s their message, that packs the punch, jarring them from their grief.  “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” …a question which is both, a challenge and a promise – rhetorical and a motivator. 
 
“Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”  And like a cemetery full of family headstones, that’s the moment, and the words, that trips their memories, there in the rock-hewn tomb.  And just as suddenly as the messengers had intruded, the women witnesses are struggling mightily only with their memories!  They remembered his words.  They remember, more than once, that Jesus had predicted this.  Though no one – the women or the men – could much figure it out what it meant, on that day of resurrection. 
 
Certainly, the first part had come to pass just in the last three days.  Judas handed Jesus over to sinful, corrupt, authorities.  Jesus went through a mock trial, without transparency or justice and was sentenced to death, by hanging on a cross.  But what did they mean by, “He is not here, but has risen?” 
 
So they kept remembering, ‘how he had told them,’ which began to spark more and more transforming memories.  There in the tomb, the incredible journey they had taken with Jesus, flashed before their eyes, no less real than the shock they felt looking out from the darkness into the light, from death to life.  And each memory was a new spark of hope for them.  Which in turn, began their new journey, as they returned from the tomb to tell the perplexing Good News to “the eleven and to all the rest.” 
 
Jesus’ tomb on Golgotha, a rocky hill just outside of Jerusalem’s wall, still sparks memories for the many pilgrims on their own journey’s, to this day.  Whether in Jerusalem, or any worship place, we bring candles in honor of – not just in memory of – the risen one. 
 
Here in our neighborhood in Chicago, in this, and many other parishes and congregations, we continue to hold out hope for the world, for our lives, and for our future, because of this Easter Good News.  We know the analysis of the reports and daily cyber-news, aimed at us like daggers, don’t feel life-giving – which is why we always turn back to the Good News from messengers, like Luke and John, Matthew and Mark, the gospel writers. 
 
There we find hope for Edgewater and Uptown, for Hyde Park and Englewood, for Pilsen and Humbolt Park.  Chicago neighborhoods and block clubs, are much like small towns, where we have a chance to know our neighbors and share our memories and hopes. 
 
Jesus’ strategy had always been to form new cells of believers.  He created the first followers, 12 men and many women disciples.  And they spread the word, the good news, to create new siblings in Christ, local cells of believers everywhere.
 
Jesus is living!  He is not among the dead, any longer.  He leads us, one neighborhood, one block, one believer at a time.  And like Peter, who reconsidered, and ran to the tomb to check it out for himself – if we give it a chance, risk stepping out of our comfort zone, and check out the message of Good News, if we live life faithfully, seeking justice and peace, loving one another as Jesus loved us – who loved us to the very end – we begin to realize that God, has found us – has conquered our fears, even of the grave – and together, by courage, we also lead others into new life. 
 
Remember how he told you, that he must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again!  Remember.
 
Alleluia, Christ is risen! 

Readings for Lent 5C, April 7, 2019

• Isaiah 43:16-21  
• Psalm 126  
• Philippians 3:4b-14  
• John 12:1-8

"Unforgetable Smell," Pastor Fred
The smell of perfume at Lazarus’ dinner party overwhelmed the whole room!  In Mark’s version he says that the gospel story, will be told in memory of Mary – because Mary’s anointing of Jesus with costly perfume, was like an extravagant Memorial gift – no one would ever forget.  Today, we know that memories associated with the sense of smell, are the strongest and deepest memories our brains can form.  Smells, trigger memories!
 
There’s one smell I can never quite forget from when I was a kid.  Every Sunday, aboard our Rambler station wagon, to Redeemer Lutheran Church, downtown Milwaukee, we passed the Red Star yeast factory.  And, en route, I prayed for a north wind to blow that smell away!  As we passed by, all of us kids held our noses.  But to no avail.  The smell that came out of that factory was so potent, you could never escape it. 
 
Only much later in life did I come to appreciate its pungent, fermented odor, and associate it, as the leaven in the little packets you buy at the grocery store – which in the comfort of your home, you can bring back to life, and raise a lump of dough into a delicious loaf of bread!  So today, the smell has been transformed in my memory, into a welcome and pleasing smell, the smell of fresh baked bread, and new life. 
 
It must have been quite a dinner-party, the banquet that Lazarus, and his sisters, Martha and Mary put on for Jesus at their Bethany home.  A home that was just over the hill from the Garden of Gethsemane, on the other side of the mountain, that was just across the valley from Jerusalem.  And a few days later, at the beginning of Passover, Jesus would borrow a donkey to ride on, in Bethany, winding down the switchback roads to the Kidron Valley, and back up into Jerusalem, as the crowds hailed him, a king, waving branches they took from palm trees. 
 
And this meal was a ‘Thank You’ dinner – if that’s what you call, inviting over the person who had just raised you from the grave?!  After all, what do you get for the person who does that?!  Lazarus’ own sisters, Mary and Martha, had warned Jesus against opening the tomb, because the stench would be so great.  Today, they were still rejoicing that he had – the smell of death, was transformed into victory!  So, out of their meager subsistence, they give back their best to Jesus, a banquet of fresh bread and vegetables, maybe even goat or lamb, if they could afford it, filling the house this time, with new and delicious smells. 
 
Apparently, it was feast enough for at least 16, seeing the disciples were also present.  But it was the dessert course, if you will, that stole the show, Mary’s stash of embalming perfumes, which she had saved for a moment such as this, that made a lasting impression.  The dinner feast was just a prelude to this somewhat scandalous act of intimacy, when Mary pours the costly ointment on Jesus feet, and wipes them – with her hair! 
 
Suddenly, as the fragrance fills the room, heads turn, marking the event with an indelible memory!  You could cut the tension with a knife!  And, when Judas tries to use the moment to demean her action and put a price on it, Jesus actually commends what she has done, even though that kind of money - 300 denarii, as much as a year’s salary - could support a lot of meals at Care for Real to feed the hungry!  The truth is, says John, Judas, the treasurer of the 12, was just trying to divert everyone’s attention from the fact that, he was a thief, stealing from the treasury box for himself, or possibly for his pet charity, the underground armed Nationalists, called the Sicarrii,? 
 
But Jesus rebukes Judas, and his spin, insisting Mary’s beautiful gift is perfectly appropriate for this occasion.  Jesus’ hour of his glorification – his death, resurrection, and ascension – are at hand, and business as usual will have to take a back seat.  No matter how important feeding the poor is, this is the time, “the hour,” when God has come to make history.  Jesus, the bridegroom, is here, and a dinner party and ritual anointing for burial are exactly what are called for. 
 
Knowing what time it is, is important.  We know it is spring time, for example.  Easter and Passover are almost here.  The earth is turning, the light is gaining strength, the So/un is about to do a new thing! 
 
The prophet Isaiah was this kind of time keeper, promising from Babylon better days, in the name of the Lord.  Perhaps he remembered the smell of Passover, back in Jerusalem, when thousands of lambs were sacrificed by the priests for the crowds of pilgrims arriving, and it triggered for him that time when the chosen people were rescued down in Egypt, and how now in exile in Babylon, the time had come again.  It was when hope was thin and morale was low, that God promised something new.  ‘Don’t even remember the great things I once did for you,’ God says, bragging a little, ‘that I brought you out of captivity in Egypt, parting the Red Sea, extinguishing their warriors as easy as a dimly burning wick.  That was nothing.  Look – now I will make rivers in the desert, and bring you back to Jerusalem and redeem you!  The Exodus was nothing compared to the new thing I am doing today.’ 
 
So Jesus is excited for Mary’s gift, for its newness, no matter how unorthodox.  It is a sign of his anointing for burial, but with a brand new twist.  Jesus knows he must die, but that is only Act I of his glorification.  The grave will not be able to hold him, and so, this is a beautifully appropriate gift.  Though he will die, he will not need perfume afterwards, in his grave.  Peter and John will discover that the tomb is empty.  And Mary herself will see him in his resurrected body, raised and springing up to new life in that garden, like a glorious trumpeting Easter lily.  So now is precisely the time, for the anointing of Jesus!  The house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, is filled with the fragrance of perfume, not as a sign of waste or mourning, but of anticipatory joy for the new thing that God is about to do. 
 
And, let me add one last thing, one more memory in regard to that Red Star yeast factory.  Which is, how yeast is the also the key ingredient, that can transform barley sprinkled with hops, into beer!  And of course, before this micro-brewery explosion we’re in now, Milwaukee was the beer capital of the world, dependent on that transformative agent, yeast for that beer, as well as bread.  The pungent, stinky smell of the yeast factory, is also symbolic of the alcoholic lift and tastiness of the brew that pairs so well with, a polish, pizza, and any number of other tasty dishes! 
 
What are the strongest smells you remember?  Are any of them associated with a meal?  Does their meaning change for you, over time? 
 
The smell of perfume at Lazarus’ dinner party was overwhelming!  It was a giddy, bubbly, over the top extravagance, that smelled like a sweetness, not of the tomb, or of  death, but of something new, that God was about to do, to redeem us. 
 
I would suggest that it smelled like a yeast factory, not only for the memory of its strong sour odor, but for how it transformed the memory of wastefulness that Judas suggested, into a new memory, a sweet memory of Jesus’ extravagant, life-giving gift to us – and the taste of the Bread of Life, which, when we share it around Christ’s table, nourishes and sustains us, here, and as a promise of the realm of God’s heavenly banquet, to come.      

Readings for 4th Sunday in Lent, March 31, 2019

• Joshua 5:9-12  
• Psalm 32  
• 2 Corinthians 5:16-21  
• Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Standing Invitation, Pastor Fred
Augustine of Hippo was baptized at the Easter Vigil, by Ambrose, the leading scholar and bishop of Milan, Italy.  Augustine was not a baby, but 31 years old!  It took him a while to find the grace of God.   
 
Augustine was very much influenced by Ambrose, his mentor.  What attracted Augustine to Ambrose was that he was one of the greatest speakers and rhetoricians of the 4th C.  Our two Diakonia students from Unity, John and Michael – great rhetoricians in their own right – can tell you more about this, having just read Augustine’s Confessions.  For instance, how Augustine tenderly recalled Ambrose as:  “That man of God [who] received me as a father would, and welcomed my coming as a good bishop should.”  Ambrose adopted Augustine as a spiritual son, after the death of Augustine's father, and truly welcomed him home. 
 
It was also after a life that some might call, lost in “dissolute living!”  Something like the younger son in our parable today, Augustine is notable for the life he lived before he turned to Christianity.  He had walked away from his parent’s life in the Christian faith, and turned toward rival Manicheism, before losing interest almost as quickly in its dualist theology and disappointing bishop.  When he was a student, as Augustine tells it in the Confessions, he stole fruit from an orchard with some friends, not because they were hungry, but just for the pleasure of going against the rules.  And Augustine also wrote about what he called his sexual tribulations and carnal temptations.  Augustine was married, but also maintained 2 relationships with women outside of his vows, to the great disapproval of his mother, who tried to intervene more than once.  But at the same time, through his intellectual brilliance, he was accepted to teach in the academy in Rome, which, at the time, was the most visible academic position in the Latin world, and also a stepping stone to a political career. 
 
But then he met Ambrose, his equal in rhetoric, and his teacher in the Christian faith, and Augustine’s life turned completely around.  Or rather, God turned Augustine around!  As he relates in the Confessions, his conversion was prompted by a childlike voice he heard telling him to “take up and read”, which Augustine took as a divine command to open the Bible and read the first thing he saw.  And what Augustine turned to, was Paul's Letter to the Romans, the 13th chapter:
let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. [parts from Wikipedia]
 
Augustine was definitely cut from the clothe of the younger son in our parable today!  The son that turned away from his family to embark on a journey of self-discovery, and some might say, ‘dissolute living.’ 
 
There are so many illusions to other biblical pairs of sons in the bible.  Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his 11 brothers. 
 
Here in this parable – no names are given, just the younger and older brother.  And for the original audience, those who heard and read this parable, they would have related to the younger brother, the Jacob’s and Joseph’s, who were the heroes of their Hebrew stories.  But they quickly would have been upset at Jesus, that the younger brother of his parable is such a cad, a disrespectful son.  His “dissolute living” refers to immoral behavior with little or no conscience, and his fall from grace is swift and far.  It’s not a pretty picture! 
 
From the start, the younger brother is oblivious to tradition, saying, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me,” when Jesus’ audience knew that nothing is passed down to the next generation before the death of the father.  Another translation of the word “property” makes the case even more stark:  ousia has the connotation of substance or existence.  So it would read: The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of [your] existence that will belong to me.’  
 
And in the next sentence when ‘property’ is used, it comes from the Greek word, bios, for life.  So it would be: “So, the father, divided his life between them.”  And, “A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his existence in dissolute living (zao /from the word life). 
 
His throwing caution to the wind, and blowing his father’s gift, his very ‘existence’ and ‘life’ in dissolute living – is now compounded by a famine in the country he ran away to.  So to stay alive, he took any old job he could get, which turned out to be the ethical ‘embarrassment of the century’ for all the good Jews listening to Jesus’ story – feeding the unclean swine – and to top it off, the pigs were eating better than he was!  When he finally came to see himself, and how far he had fallen, he longed to go back home, where even the servants of his family ate well, better than he, the son, who was ‘dying of hunger!’ 
 
On his way home, he practices his speech for his father, desperate, not to be rejected for his unforgivable mistakes, but before he can even get to his doorstep, his old man comes running out, like he’d never seen him move before, hugging and kissing him as if he was a newborn baby, in an embarrassing welcome of utter joy!
 
He tries to deliver his sincere speech of contrition, but his father is laser focused to “put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet” in order to prepare him for the biggest feast and celebration ever!  “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” says the gracious father.   
 
Meanwhile, the older brother, has to find out what all the celebrating is about, from one of the hired hands, and is super ticked off!  His father comes out to plead with him to join in.  But the older brother let’s out his deepest lingering feelings that, you have to wonder, if he might later have regretted: ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.  But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’
 
How many of us have been bitter like this, to some degree?  …Having been faithful and obedient, and, felt left out of the rewards, despite our hard work – we can’t help but feel resentful? 
 
But maybe the older son gets over his tantrum, now that he got it out?  Maybe he will decide to come into the celebration, or maybe, at least, go through the motions to give thanks that his little brother has returned, is not lost, or dead?  The parable leaves that question open to us, to answer. 
 
One of the saddest parts of this parable is the separation of the sons from each other.  Remember back to the beginning of the parable, after the younger son’s rash decision to leave, Luke tells us, “So he – the father – divided his life between them.”  The divine-like father, lets him go of his own free will, knowing the risk.  But when the lost son has come back, and his older son resents it, he calmly insists that he, his older son will always be with him, and all the father has is his.  The celebration for the younger son is because he has been found, and is alive! 
     And just as wonderful, now they are a family again!  His sons are not divided.  And he is not separated from them.  They can reconcile as a family.  And that’s something all of them deserve to celebrate together!
 
God in Christ Jesus is our reconciling parent, welcoming us home, whatever Augustinian sins and mistakes we’ve made.  God is all-gracious! forgiving, when we turn around from our old, dead-end ways, from the behavior that lives only for our own pleasure and purpose, and we return home to our life of joyful servanthood.  The feast, is a feast of reconciliation!  “We had to celebrate and rejoice,” says the father, “because this [sibling] of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” 
 
Will the older son come into the banquet?  Will the younger son be able to accept his father’s love and find redemption?  We, have been one or the other of the father’s children, more often, than we might like to admit.  But through God’s grace and love, Jesus leaves the questions of reconciliation and celebration open to us, as well.  Will we come in to the banqueting celebration that God has invited us to share with our wayward siblings?  It’s a standing invitation!