Sunday, March 31, 2013

Stone, Sword and Shield


The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
March 31, 2013 - Easter

Stone, Sword and Shield
Matthew 28:1-10
An earthquake;
an angel rolling back the stone;
soldiers, big, strapping, and swarthy,
frightened, fainted, and fallen.

This is the Easter picture Matthew paints for us.
A picture filled with drama,
far more drama than we find in the other gospels.

Neither Mark nor Luke nor John gives us an earthquake.
Neither do the others give us an angel at work
rolling back the stone,
nor guards frightened into a dead faint.

What all four gospels give us, though, is the empty tomb,
and Mary Magdalene as the first to discover it.

We know the story, don’t we:
Mary went out to the tomb in the early morning hours
of that first day of the week,
that Sunday morning.
John tells us she was by herself;
Luke tells us she was accompanied by Joanna,
Mary the mother of James,
and “other women”;
Mark tells us it was Mary the mother of
James and Salome who walked to the tomb
with Mary Magdalene;
while Matthew tells us simply that Mary’s companion
was “the other Mary”.

They had come to anoint Jesus’ body,
to finish the job that had been left unfinished on Friday evening
once the sun set and the Sabbath had begun.
Even before the sun rose on that Sunday morning,
Mary set out, determined,
a job to do with or without help.

It was Joseph of Arimathea who had placed
Jesus’ body in the tomb on Friday evening.
He had taken Jesus’ lifeless body down from the cross,
and carried it so gently to the tomb,
where he wrapped the body in linen and spices
as part of the burial ritual.
But then the sun sank below the horizon,
the last rays of light evaporating,
darkness blanketing the countryside,
and so Joseph rolled a large stone
over the entrance to the tomb and
went off to observe the Sabbath.

The morning of the third day came,
and Mary set out.
But as she and the other Mary approached the tomb,
the ground shook, almost knocking them off their feet.
And then they could see an angel “descending from heaven,
like lightning, his clothing white as snow.”
The angel rolled back the stone,
opening up the tomb,
and then sat on the stone and spoke,
“Do not be afraid;
I know you are looking for Jesus,
but he is not here.
He has been raised.”

The angel beckoned, and the two Marys stepped forward
gingerly, carefully,
around the guards who had fainted dead away,
having fallen heavily in a clatter of shield and swords.

The two women both looked in and saw the emptiness of the tomb.
They then they turned and walked away,
slowly at first,
but within a few yards they were both running,
running back to town filled with fear –
filled with joy,
filled with questions.

They spoke not a word to each other,
but they were both thinking the same thing:
how could this be?
They had seen Joseph place the body
in the tomb on Friday evening.
They had seen Joseph roll the stone over the entrance.
How could the tomb be empty?
Where was the body of their Lord?

The angel’s words propelled them forward:
“He is not here;
He has been raised.”

Was he truly alive?
Had he not died on the cross?
When Joseph had taken Jesus down from the cross
had he missed a faint heartbeat in Jesus’ chest?
As he wrapped Jesus in linen in the tomb,
had Joseph missed the sound of shallow breathing?

No, surely they had seen him die on the cross!
Surely there could be no confusing that!

Was this a cruel hoax?
Had someone stolen Jesus body?
Stolen it as a vicious trick to be played on those who loved Jesus?
“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb,
we do not where they have laid him,”
was Mary’s anguished cry to Peter.
In John’s gospel she begged of the man
she assumed to be the gardener,
“Sir, if you have carried him away,
tell me where you have laid him
and I will take him away.”

The chief priests and the Pharisees,
those cunning, corrupt leaders of the Temple,
they suspected that Jesus’ followers
might try something like that:
steal Jesus’ body, hide it,
and then concoct a story
about Jesus magically, mythically returning to life.

They had remembered Jesus saying that just as
Jonah had been in the belly of the whale for three days,
so too, “the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.”
(Matthew 12:40)

So, on Saturday morning,
the day after Jesus’ crucifixion,
“the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate
and said, ‘Sir, we remember what that impostor said
while he was still alive, “After three days I will rise again.”
Therefore command that the tomb be made secure
until the third day;
otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away,
and tell the people,
“He has been raised from the dead”,
and the last deception would be worse
than the first.’
(Matthew 27:62-64)

No one else seemed to have remembered Jesus saying anything
about rising from the dead,
but the chief priests and the Pharisees – they remembered,
and the words haunted them:
“three days the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.”

They had worked too hard to rid themselves
of the troublesome carpenter,
the one who had challenged their authority,
their power,
their position.
They had to be sure, had to be rid not only of him,
but of all his troublesome followers as well.
                                        
But, Pilate had had enough of the religious leaders,
their infernal and seemingly eternal squabbles.
He had other things to do,
other things to think about,
so he brushed them off, saying to them,
“You have a guard of soldiers;
go, make it as secure as you can.”

“Deal with it yourself,”
was what Pilate was saying to the priests and Pharisees,
“Don’t bother me;
I’ve washed my hands of the dead man,
and now I want to wash my hands of you as well.”

So off they went, the chief priests and the Pharisees,
the great leaders of the Temple,
hustling out of the city to the tomb,
bustling and rustling in their fine clothing,
afraid of a dead man;
afraid of Peter, Andrew, James and John,
men who at that very moment
cowered in fear for their own lives,
certain that arrest and crucifixion
was their fate, too.

It was late in the morning on that second day,
that Saturday,
when the priests and Pharisees arrived at the tomb.
They wasted no time, barking orders to the guards:
“Set mortar in the cracks,
roll other stones on either side of the large stone
that covers the entrance.
Seal it; secure it!
Post two guards on alert at all times!
Let no one near.
Two days is all we need;
we have only to get to the fourth day.”

They were resolute, those men,
as they set stone, sword and shield against the dead man
and his band of ragged followers.

The priests and Pharisees were men of law and learning,
men of Scripture,
but as they toiled furiously
they seemed to have forgotten the words of the Psalmist,
that against the power of God,
“A king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
The war horse is a vain hope for victory
and by its great might it cannot save.”
(Psalm 33:16)

Against the power of God
nothing stands,
no one stands.
And so, early the next morning,
on the third day,
the angel of the Lord effortlessly rolled the stone away,
the guards, as big and strong as they were,
dropped at the angel’s feet
frightened almost to death,
and the empty tomb was on display for all to see.

The empty tomb: for all to see the reality of God’s power
and God’s love for all the world:
“He is not here,
He is been raised.
Look not for the living in the place of the dead,
for he is risen.”

The angel of the Lord rolled the stone away
not to let Jesus out,
for no tomb could hold the risen Christ,
but to let all the world look in,
to see the tomb in all its emptiness,   
and to understand the utter powerless of
stone, sword and shield
against the power of God.

And the irony is that it was Pilate
who seemed to have been the only one
to have anticipated the power of God.
Pilate, as evil and contemptible as he was
sent the priests and Pharisees off with a smug shrug:
“Go ahead, you’ve got guards and weapons;
make the tomb as secure as you think you can;
but it will not help you,
for something tells me that you will not succeed.”

“All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,”
said the prophet, speaking of you and me.
(Isaiah 53:6)
But the shepherd is here to watch over us,
guide us,
and call us back to the fold when we do stray,
even now, two thousand years later,
for the shepherd lives,
risen!

The living Christ,
our Lord, our Savior,
risen for you,
risen for me!

“We shall go out in joy and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before us shall burst into song,
and all the tree of the field shall clap their hands,”
(Isaiah 55:12)
because the tomb was empty on that Sunday morning,
our Lord risen.
Yes, risen!
Risen indeed!
Allelulia!

AMEN

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Do You Know What You Are Saying?


The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
March 24, 2013
Palm Sunday

Do You Know What You Are Saying?
Luke 19:28-40

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you,
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey.”
(Zechariah 9:9)

Were these words,
words spoken by the prophet Zechariah some 500 years before,
were these words running through the minds of any of the disciples
on that first Palm Sunday?

Did any of the people lining the road
as the procession wound its way around the Mount of Olives
on its way to the gates of the city of Jerusalem,
think of the prophet’s words?
“Lo, your king comes to you…
humble and riding on a donkey.”

Who would have looked at the man on the back of the donkey
and thought of him as a king?
Even Peter might have struggled with that idea.
A king is majestic,
formidable,
all powerful.
A king rules;
he commands obedience.
The people bow down to the king
out of equal measures of respect and fear.
A king reflects greatness and glory,
power and might;
A king is the personification of the nation.

Who could possibly have looked at the man astride the donkey,
especially if they knew it was a borrowed burro he was riding,
and thought of him as a king?
Who could possibly have thought of him as
“triumphant and victorious”?
Who could possibly have looked at him and thought
that this man was the one who would
“command peace to the nations
and whose dominion [would be] from sea to sea”?
(Zechariah 9:10)

This was a man whose own hometown had rejected him,
and whose very disciples struggled to obey him,
who ate with sinners and prostitutes and the unclean.

And yet, there was something that
moved through the crowds,
something that moved the crowds,
as though the wind whistling through the valley
carried the very breath of God.

And so, as Jesus passed by on the back of that small animal,
his dirty, dusty feet skimming the surface of the road,
the people “spread their cloaks on the road,”
and waved their palm branches with joyful abandon.

And then, as he came down the road
that wound around the Mount of Olives,
with the great Temple rising up ahead of him,
“the whole multitude of disciples
began to praise God joyfully with loud voices
for all the deeds of power they had seen.”
“Blessed is the king!” they shouted,
“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!”

The crowd grew boisterous, loud,
so loud and feverish with enthusiasm
that the Pharisees – the leaders of the Temple –
demanded that Jesus silence his disciples.

But the man no one thought of as king
looked at his disciples with delight;
their joy was his joy.
And in response he said to the Pharisees,
“I tell you, if these were silent,                                 
the stones would shout out.”

It was Jesus’ way of telling the Pharisees,
that no, he would not tell his beloved friends to be quiet,
for he knew that they were filled with joy,
that they were filled with the Spirit of God.
Jesus knew that even he could not silence them.

He may have wanted to repeat more of
the prophet Habbakuk’s words,
for the words, spoken 600 years before,
seemed so appropriate for the Pharisees,
so applicable to the Pharisees:
“Alas for you who get evil gain for your houses,
   setting your nest on high
   to be safe from the reach of harm!
You have devised shame for your house
   by cutting off many peoples;
   you have forfeited your life.
The very stones will cry out from the wall,
   and the plaster will respond from the woodwork.”
(Habbakuk 2:9-11)

With the Temple looming large above them,
the Pharisees, the Sadducees –
all the leaders of the religious community
had brought shame on God’s house,
by their faithlessness,
their self-righteousness,
their arrogance,
their determination to make God’s house
a place to glorify themselves.

The Pharisees were so good at parading their faith,
but so inept at living their faith.
The boisterous group of parading men and women
all shouting out around Jesus
certainly had their shortcomings,
but they tried their best to live their faith,
to live as Jesus taught them,
as God commanded them.

“Look at the proud!” warned Habbukuk,
“Their spirit is not right in them;
but the righteous live by their faith…
…[and] the proud do not endure…”

So on Jesus rode,
leaving the Pharisees to look at each other in bemusement.
On he rode,
on to the gate that led into Jerusalem,
the men and women following him,
all of them still filled with joy and excitement,
the sullenness of the Pharisees of no concern to them.

On walked the crowd that followed Jesus,
singing out the Passover psalm,
for it was the Passover that drew them to Jerusalem:
“This is the day that the Lord has made,
let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord…!
The Lord is God and he has given us light!
Bind the festal procession with branches!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord…!”
(Psalm 118:24-27)

Had any of us been there on the road just outside Jerusalem,
would we have seen a king in the man astride the donkey?
Would we have joined the disciples in their singing?
Would we have surrendered to the Spirit
and joined the procession?
Or would we have chosen the easier path,
the much less risky path,
and simply joined the crowds along the side,
waving palm branches and shouting from the sidelines
as we watched the parade go by?

Would we have followed the group into the city,
a group that had found itself on the wrong side of authority
even before it passed through the city gates?

Two thousand years later we still struggle to follow Jesus,
follow him as one is called to follow a king,
follow him in obedience,
surrendering our will not from fear,
but in joyful response to the grace and love
given us by God in Christ.

Two thousand years later we still struggle
to give ourselves to God,
to Jesus completely,
making Mary’s words to God our own:
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord;
Let it be with me according to your word.”
(Luke 1:38)

Two thousand years later we still struggle
to make Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gesthemene
our own prayer:
“Not my will, O Lord, but yours be done.”
(Luke 22:42)

Two thousand years later the parade still beckons
but we find it easier to stand on the side of the road.
Oh yes, we wave our palms enthusiastically,
and shout out,
“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,”
but we then let the parade pass so we can get back to our lives,
back to the things we feel called to do,
the things we need and want to do.

“Hosanna” is the right word for us to shout out,
 for the word means “save us”.
It is a plea, a call for help.
 
“Save us Lord”, not from temptation or evil,
but from lukewarm faith.

Save us from our hesitancy,
our unwillingness to surrender ourselves completely to Christ

Save us from our selective learning,
our selective obedience,
picking and choosing the lessons we like
and discarding the others.  

Save us O Lord, from our reluctance to embrace the reality
that we have been called to follow
the stone the builders rejected,
and that following Christ often means
the life we are called to live will run counter to
what society teaches us.

Save us O Lord from our short memories,
that cause us to forget that in our baptisms
we died to the old life, the old ways,
and were reborn, re-created
to new life in Christ.

Five hundred years ago John Calvin told us
what we know deep in our hearts
but which find too easy to forget:
that what we call Christianity is
“a doctrine not of tongue, but of life.
… it is received only when it possesses the whole soul,
and finds a seat and resting place
in the inmost affection of the heart.”
(Institutes, 3.6.4)

It was a such humble parade
that entered Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday,
led by a man who could not have looked less like a king.
But that man is our king,
and he calls us to follow him,
surrendering ourselves completely to him

He calls us to join the parade,
our voices united in praise and hope:
“Rejoice greatly and shout aloud!
for the gates of righteousness are open
and we are invited to enter through them.
The Lord is our strength and our might,
and the stone the builders rejected
has become for us the chief cornerstone.”

Step off the sidelines and join the parade;
join the procession led by our king.
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Glory to God in highest heaven.”

AMEN