Saint Rachel

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

I had trouble beginning to write this sermon because the only thing I could think about is that Rachel Held Evans is dead. She was 37 years old. It’s weird to write about her with past-tense verbs, but it’s the truth, and so I’m working with it. She was a writer, a theologian, a blogger, a friend, a woman of valor, and a devoted disciple of her Risen Lord, Jesus the Christ.

Rachel was a former evangelical Christian who dedicated much of her life to figuring out just what it was that God was calling her to, and how to make sure that other people could figure that out, too. She made her own way in Christianity when there wasn’t space for her, and she brought everyone else who wanted to come along. She celebrated the sacred worth of every person, especially the historically marginalized and minoritized. In her sweet Tennessee accent she pronounced blessings on women, queer folks, people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants, doubters, seekers, and people who might fit into most of those categories at once. She was kind, and she was authentic, and she was faithful.

Last Saturday, many hundreds—if not thousands—of people took to Twitter, in particular, to collectively mourn Rachel’s death. There were several hashtags we were using to share our grief, and one of my favorites that popped up was #SaintRachel.

Historically, saints of the church are ordinary people who are recognized as having been exceptionally holy in their earthly life; in some denominations, like Roman Catholicism, there is a formal process for being canonized as a saint, and in the Lutheran tradition, it’s actually everyone who ever lives and dies. Somewhere between those two is an option for Rachel, I think, which is that while I might recognize her, like everyone, as simultaneously saint and sinner, she leaned heavily on the saint side of that equation.

And if you’re imaging Rachel in your mind’s eye now—a glowing southern lady, smiling and wearing a cardigan—you’ll probably be surprised to know that I think she was a lot like John the Baptist. The scripture for tonight does not feature John the Baptist, but I’ll get us there, don’t worry. I’m placing Rachel Held Evans adjacent to Saint John the Baptizer because it is unreasonable to compare anyone too closely to Jesus the Christ—we only have one savior, and though we loved Rachel, she was not it—but it makes perfect sense to group her with John because over and over and over again she pointed the way to Jesus.

John the Baptist, you may recall, ran on ahead of Jesus, telling everyone that he was coming, and what he would do when he did. Rachel was, perhaps, a mirror to John, in that she ran many centuries behind Jesus, telling everyone that he had come, and what we should do because he did.

She was in the wilderness between Evangelical and mainline protestant Christianity a lot of the time, sure of very little besides the truth that she was—and that each of us are—beloved by God. She knew this, and so she wrote and she read and she questioned and she doubted and she struggled and she laughed and she welcomed and she prophesied and she wondered and she prayed and she ate and she sang and she inspired me and many others to turn, again and again, to the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Rachel was not one of the twelve fishermen that Jesus gathered at the beginning of his ministry, and she was not one of the men that ate breakfast with him on the beach in tonight’s Gospel story. But she was a disciple. She was disciplined in her love for her fellow outcasts and wanderers; she was disciplined in her openness to learning new things that changed her mind; she was disciplined in her rebuke of the sins of her former Christianity, calling out bigotry where it continued; she was disciplined in her support of other doubters and cautious believers; she was disciplined in her amplifying of other voices and writers, especially those that had been silenced by their churches. She was a disciple.

She wrote four best-selling books and a zillion blog posts and essays and articles that have appeared all over the place. I have two of her books in my office that you can borrow, and one at my house that I can bring here if you want to borrow that, too. Why am I telling you all of this tonight? Because sometimes we open up the Bible and we read a weird story about a conversion experience on the road to Damascus, and a weird story about singing creatures, and weird story about fish for breakfast and feeding of sheep, and we don’t really know what any of that has to do with us. We need each other—to wonder about these things together, to sometimes agree to disagree, and  to show each other the way. Rachel was one of the people I relied on—more than I knew, until she died—to show me the way.

When I wonder about what my role is in the feeding of the sheep, the building up of the body of Christ, the fishing for people, the casting out demons, the healing of the sick, when I’m just me, I get stuck. But I am reminded by Rachel and by you and by the rest of my great cloud of witnesses that I’m not just me. I’m me, among you. You’re you, among us. You may not see yourself as one of these saints, confidently carrying on the work of Jesus in the world, but you are. You, being you, is what God loves.

We talked about that on Monday for spirituality group, as we finished up our week-long practice of “choosing joy.” It was a tough week for me to practice choosing joy, and that was all the more reason to do it. We chatted about that toughness, since there is so much going on the world that brings us not-joy. But we noticed the small things that made us smile, and we kept noticing those small things, until there were so many of them that it was hard not to notice them everywhere! And we were able, by looking at our lives through the lens of joy, to notice just how many things were going on in our day-to-day lives that were unremarkable, but joyful.

We choose joy with our friends and family, and the miracle of the tiny sprouts in my backyard that will one day be food that we will eat, and the colorful doodles in our notebooks, and the delight of our favorite snacks, and the sunshine being so inviting, and even a pair of holographic roller skates. These things may not seem holy to you at first glance, because they are just part of your life.

But that turns out to be just it! This is our life. This is what there is. God loves us as we are, in our routines and our boringness and our humanness. God doesn’t love some ideal version of you, but the real you. God loves who you are, and who you are becoming.

Rachel was and I am and you are all shining examples of that oft-quoted thing: “God does not call the equipped but equips the called.” Technically, that sort of says like “you’re a hot mess but God is working with it” and you know what, some days that is the Gospel to me, friends.

You may think that being a disciple means being perfect, or knowing everything about God, or always believing everything about Jesus, but you only need to look at these dudes in these stories to know that that could not be further from the truth.

Saint Peter is, with all due respect, an absolute dolt. He and the rest of the twelve disciples make all sorts of questionable choices and ask Jesus all sorts of questions that you might expect them to already know the answer to, and Jesus mostly just chuckles softly and tells them a story. And they are now saints of the church and the examples we hold up as hallmarks of the Christian life!

So, dear ones, that’s it. You’re a disciple, congratulations, keep up the good work. Continue to be disciplined in your love for one another. Continue to be disciplined in your welcoming of new people to our dinner table and to your classrooms and to all the communities you belong to. Continue to be disciplined in your asking of the big questions, the ones that keep you up at night or the ones you’re almost too embarrassed to ask. Continue to be disciplined in your belief that everyone—including you—is loved by God, and deserves to be treated as a full and beautiful human being. Continue to get a little ahead of yourself and jump out of the boat every once in a while. You’re in good company, with the whole communion of saints.

As Rachel said, in 2017: “You have the sacraments. You have the call. You have the Holy Spirit. You have one another. You have a God who knows the way out of the grave. You have everything you need. You just need to show up and be faithful.”

Amen.

Reasonable Doubt

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

We’re here to talk about Jesus by talking about Thomas, and I am very excited about that because Thomas is great. And there’s a disclaimer I need to make before we get into it, because centuries of either skipping over it or interpreting it incorrectly is part of how we got to where we are, and we are long overdue for a course correction.

In many places in the Gospel According to John, and in our reading for tonight, you’ll see phrases like “the doors were locked for fear of the Jews.” The word there is Ioudaion, which, in context, means Judeans, which means the governing authorities of the placed called Judea, who were Jewish. It doesn’t mean your classmates who practice Judaism, with whom some of us gathered on the quad this evening. The line from point A to point B on anti-semitism is sometimes that short, and that is so dangerous.

Last Saturday morning in Poway, and six months ago in Pittsburgh, and many many times throughout history, Jewish people have been murdered by white supremacists. Many of those white supremacists have had their understandings of Judaism twisted from the very beginning from seemingly innocuous scripture like this. Fear is very powerful.

It is important to me that you understand this, because you are emerging adults in a world full of fear, and you have more power to counterbalance that fear than you are led to believe.

We worry, as Christians, I think, about fear and about doubt and about whether all of this stuff that we’re practicing is really making the world better. If you leave this building on Wednesday nights with just a little more love for your fellow humans than you came in the door with, and a little more courage to do something you’re afraid of, and a little more emboldened to speak peace into a world of violence, then we’re on the right path.

It breaks my heart to think about any of you being in danger on campus, in your classrooms, in movie theaters, or at restaurants, or wherever you go—to fear for your safety in our sacred places almost too much for me.

But I spoke with a few of you this week—and so many other weeks, when death felt so near—about how we are the Easter people. I say that phrase a lot, and you’ll hear it in other contexts from other Christians and other Lutherans, especially, and I just want to remind you what that means. Being the Easter people doesn’t mean we’re always sunshine and candy and spring flowers. It means that we are always alive, even in death.

I know, I know, impossible. But that’s the thing. Jesus was dead, and Jesus is alive again. Death is real—perhaps the realest thing there is—but death is never the end of the story. God promises us that there is life, and there is death, and there is life again. That sounds too good to be true, and I think that that’s exactly why it makes perfect sense that our dear friend Thomas in tonight’s gospel is not quite ready to accept it as fact, either!

On the week after Easter every year, my fellow clergy and I all write sermons about Thomas. They say the usual things that we say about Thomas: he wasn’t with the other disciples, he doubts that Jesus has risen, he demands to touch Jesus’ wounds, he gets the opportunity to do so, he believes, he proclaims. A great story!

But there’s more to it than that. The disciples are all celebrating, delighted by this unfathomable turn of events, and saying “He is risen! We have seen the Lord! Hallelujah!” but Thomas thinks for a moment and says, “I don’t know, y’all. You saw him? I wish I could see him. I’d like to touch his wounds and hear his voice—as you have done—so that I may say, without a doubt, that he is risen.”

And that’s not really too much to ask, is it? The other disciples have seen and touched and heard, shouldn’t Thomas be afforded the same? And Thomas—like any of us who have grieved a death—may very well still be coming to terms with the idea that all of it even happened. Weren’t they just traveling the Palestinian countryside together, the whole community, a few weeks ago? Weren’t they just riding haphazardly on donkeys in to Jerusalem? Wasn’t Jesus just here?

With all this rattling around in his mind, what does it feel like to hear the other disciples proclaim that Jesus is risen from the dead? Thomas is sure that, last week, they told him Jesus had died. Was that real? Did that happen? Was it not Jesus whose face he’d cradled in a final goodbye? Was it not Jesus nailed to the cross, after all? Was this all some kind of trick? Or, what if the disciples are mistaken? What if it is an impostor claiming to be their Lord? Thomas needs to touch this man who claims to be the risen Christ and touch those wounds.

This is important. Thomas does not ask that Jesus perform a miracle. Thomas does not ask that Jesus break bread with them. Thomas does not ask for Jesus to recount the details of their life together, as some sort of password.

Thomas wants to touch the wounds—Thomas wants to know that the resurrected Jesus continues to be the crucified Jesus. That all of it was real. That Thomas did witness his friend die, and that that friend who really did die is really now raised.

And as he has always done, Jesus appears at just the right time. Jesus knows what Thomas needs. “Put your finger here and see my hands,” Jesus says. “Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” And so, in touching the familiar hands of his friend, Thomas recognizes the resurrected Jesus—the one whose torture and death he had witnessed just two weeks before. It was true, what his friends had said! He is risen! Thomas recognized him, exclaiming “My Lord and My God!”

Thomas’ understanding of Jesus, of the power of God, of the movement of the Spirit, was not based on his ability to see and interpret and rationalize. Thomas knew that the Christian life was about reaching out a hand, experiencing human brokenness, and believing in that connection.

It’s okay if you’re not convinced that Jesus was dead and is now alive. You didn’t see it happen, either. A good way, I think—and Thomas would probably agree—to investigate, is to reach out. Look around, as you are able, and see the human brokenness all around us.

Reach out. Take a risk. Make a connection with someone you’re unsure about. Open your scared, vulnerable self, so that someone might reach out to you. Connection in our shared fear and uncertainty—like gathering for tonight’s vigil—can help us to see the way forward, together.

I’ve said before and I’ll say again that “Doubting Thomas” is such an unfair nickname given to this man. Remember, just last week, when we heard that the women ran from the empty tomb to tell their friends that Jesus was alive, and they “dismissed it as an idle tale”? Why aren’t those men known as the Doubting Disciples in every theology textbook forever?

Or maybe, if we reframe the role of doubt in our lives of faith, being known as Doubting Thomas isn’t such an insult. We shouldn’t accept everything anyone ever tells us about God—especially when we’re told that we need to meet unreachable standards of perfection in order to be loved by God. We should doubt people who are so certain about their exact image of God being the capital-T-Truth, and hearing no other perspectives.

God is complicated, and we’re complicated. I guess this is confusing, because I hope that you never doubt that you are a beloved child of God, perfect as you are and as you are becoming. But, if you ever do doubt that, you know where to find me to tell you again. And maybe, some time, you’ll be certain, and you’ll reassure a friend in doubt.

Remember, we’re the Body of Christ, together. Broken and made whole. Alive, and dead, and alive again. Thanks be to God!

You, beloved, are alive!

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen! [Christ is risen, indeed! Hallelujah!]

This evening we are gathered to celebrate the pinnacle of our church year, the holiest of days in the Christian life, the feast of the Resurrection of our Lord. This is the day, and the 50-day season, where we shout HALLELUJAH at all available opportunities, praising God for bringing life out of death. And all the songs have exclamation points!

If you attend a few year’s worth of Easter services, you’ll notice that there are four different versions of the story. We have the Gospel According to Matthew, to Mark, to Luke, and to John. Each story is a little bit different—the cast of characters shifts a bit, the dialogue and the events are not quite the same, but in every version, the tomb is empty. In all four versions of the story, the women who knew and loved Jesus—who had watched him murdered just days before—arrive at his graveside to mourn, to pray, and—in this year’s Gospel According to Luke—anoint his body with “the spices they had prepared.” Imagine, for a moment. It is merely hours since Jesus has died and been buried.

Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the Mother of James, and “the other women who were with them” spent their sabbath day afraid and unsure about what the future would hold. They relied on their tradition to point them toward action, to move through the rituals of grieving together.

These women probably fed their families, and gathered to pray in the candlelight. Then, before anyone else was awake, I imagine them meeting, quietly, at one of their homes, and gathering the spices they’d prepared. I imagine them looking one another in their scared faces, taking a few steadying breaths, nodding resolutely, and walking out into the dawn.

What did they talk about on the way, I wonder? Their community was in disarray, as Judas had disappeared and Peter had denied being one of them and, come to think of it, they weren’t sure where Thomas had gone to, either. Should they be going into hiding? Should they be demonstrating in the streets? Who would decide? I wonder if they simply discussed their work for the rest of the day, and their children, like a normal morning.

But when they arrived, “they found the stone rolled away from the tomb” and “they did not find the body.” This was not what they expected. I imagine their minds beginning to race. Had their friends come and moved his body, without telling them? Had they misremembered where he had been laid? Had the Romans not been satisfied with stealing Jesus’ life, they had to come back and steal his death, too?

Before they probably even formulated a complete sentence to say to one another, “suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.” Terrified, they fell to the ground and covered their faces. Nothing prepared them for this. One of the dazzling strangers speaks: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

“He is not here; but has been raised.”

“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."

Remember. Last week, on Maundy Thursday, we talked about that word “remember.” Re-member. To put back together. These dazzling strangers are complicating the story by the second, and yet have calmly asked these women to put the pieces together. While Jesus was alive, he told them he would be killed but that he would rise again.

These women—and the male disciples, too—were astounded by this every time, and never believed that Jesus could have been telling the truth. It was impossible. And yet, in the creeping light of the resurrection dawn, it is all coming into focus. Maybe, just maybe, the worst thing has not been the last thing.

The Luke story doesn’t tell us the play-by-play, but I imagine that these women scrambled to their feet and ran all the way back to their homes, panting for breath, shaking their loved ones awake, exclaiming “Jesus is alive!” To what I’m certain was their unspeakable disappointment, the women are dismissed by the eleven male disciples, who call their proclamation “an idle tale.”

In general, I abide by the maxim “believe women.” Have you ever—whether or not you are a woman—told an important story only to have someone wave it off as unlikely, since he hadn’t experienced it for himself? You can identify, then, with these women. It is important that we listen to people’s lived experience, especially when it vastly differs from our own. There are many ways of knowing things, many ways of being true.

And, simultaneously, we live in a world where seeing isn’t even always believing. A healthy dose of skepticism and doing your own research can, sometimes, save you from being dangerously misled. So, if you show up to the resurrection dawn with confusion and skepticism, you’re in good company. Most of the disciples are unsure.

But Peter—dear, dear Peter—got up and ran to the tomb. He corroborated the story of the women, that the tomb was, in fact, empty, and was amazed.

The thing that changed on the first Easter morning was not that a group of people suddenly became certain—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that Jesus had been raised from the dead; it was that they were willing to live the rest of their lives open to the possibility. They stopped looking for the living among the dead. They understood that sometimes God steps in in ways that don’t make sense.

One of my favorite writers, Hanif Abdurraqib, wrote this week that his “relationship to faith changes daily, but [he’d] like to think that one part of believing is our shared stumbling toward the witness of something that was once thought to be unbelievable.”

The resurrection morning isn’t about certainty, isn’t about correct belief, isn’t about being able to explain how someone who was dead is alive. It is about the vulnerability of allowing yourself to live into the wildly unlikely reality that God put an end to death.

Through the life, death, and glorious resurrection of Jesus the Christ, God shows us what it means to be fully human. God shows us that it means expecting the unexpected and delighting in mystery. When we find ourselves in the depths of despair, in the throes of grief, frozen in fear, and trapped in our anger, God has been there. God has lived and died as a human being, and understands our life—and our death—from the inside.

As Jesus is raised to new life, so, too, are we! In the light of Easter, we see with new eyes that the possibilities are endless! God’s love for you is boundless! You, beloved, are alive!