Sermon: "Seeing Is Believing"

Rev. Maureen Frescott

The Congregational Church of Amherst, United Church of Christ

April 12, 2015 – Second Sunday of Easter

John 20:19-31

“Seeing Is Believing”

On the evening of February 26, 2015, the power of the internet and social media was on full display when the world became captivated by a picture of a dress.

A woman in Scotland, who was soon to be married, posted a picture on her Facebook page of a dress her mother was considering wearing to the wedding.   Her mother had sent three pictures of three different dresses and had asked her which one she liked best. 

The bride-to-be showed the photos to her fiancée and pointed to a dress with horizontal stripes, saying, “I like this white and gold dress the best.” 

He proceeded to look at her like she was crazy.

“What are you talking about?” he said,

“That dress is not white and gold, it’s blue and black.”

They were looking at the same dress, but each saw a completely different color.

The couple wondered, “How can this be?”

To their further amazement, when they posted the picture of the dress on Facebook to get their friend’s opinion on the matter, the image went viral, and within hours millions of people all over the world had shared the photo and were arguing over the color of this dress.

The majority of people said the dress was white and gold – about 68% according to one unscientific poll.

But 32% of people looking at the same photo said the color of the dress was blue and black. 

Detailed analysis ensued, with some claiming that it was internet trickery and the dress color changed over time, some suggested that the color one saw depended on the lighting in the room or the angle of one’s computer screen, and a surprising number of people suggested that those who saw one color over the other were simply “delusional” and needed their eyes and their head examined.

But few could explain how two people looking at the same photo, in the same lighting, at the same angle, with neither of them being color blind, could see two entirely different colored dresses.

When the image popped up in my Facebook feed that night I showed it my wife, Stephanie.

Without telling her the backstory, I asked her, “What color is this dress?

She looked at me like I was crazy, and she said, “It’s blue and black”

I said, “Really? It’s obviously white and gold.”

The official explanation offered by neuroscientists is that the lighting in the photo itself combined with the way our brains process light and color created an optical illusion that led some of us to see one color over another.  

This fluke of lighting forced our brains to choose which end of the color spectrum to emphasize and which to discount – either the darker black and blue side or the lighter white and gold side. The lighting caused both color combinations to be present in the photo, but our brains chose to see only one of them.

Now, this whole discussion about this dress may seem frivolous to some, but the reason why this image captivated the attention of so many is because it offered startling proof that we human beings are capable of seeing the world in very different ways – not just ideologically, or philosophically, or politically, but literally.

And in this case, the realization that we can’t trust our own eyes is unsettling.

This became evident when the woman who took the photo of the infamous dress – the bride’s mother - came forward and said the dress was in reality blue and black. 

She had seen it in person, after all.

Yet, people all over the world continued to insist that she was obviously mistaken as they scoured the internet hoping to find proof that a blue and black version of this dress did not exist – it had to be white and gold.

The woman’s eyewitness account was not good enough.

People had to see it for themselves to believe.

Thomas insisted on seeing for himself.

The talk of Jesus resurrection was too much for him to believe without proof.

I always say that poor Thomas got a bad rap.

He is forever known as Doubting Thomas simply because he wanted to see with his own eyes what the other disciples had already seen with theirs.

We don’t talk about Doubting Matthew or Doubting Mark, even though they had locked themselves in a room along with the other disciples out of fear for their lives.

According to John’s gospel, on that same day, just hours before, Mary Magdalene had come running to the disciples out of breath and with joy in her eyes telling them that she had seen Jesus alive in the garden outside the empty tomb.   

Yet they chose not to believe.

If they had believed they would have been out in the street with Mary telling everyone within earshot about the miraculous resurrection of their messiah

 …instead they were hiding in fear.

They didn’t believe until Jesus walked through the door and they saw him with their own eyes.

Poor Thomas had the misfortune of not being there for the first viewing.

So Jesus came back a week later to make sure that he saw and believed as well.

For Thomas, perhaps it was about more than seeing proof of the resurrection.

When the other disciples told him they had seen Jesus standing before them in the flesh, Thomas said, “I need to see his hands.  I need to see the marks the nails left behind. I need to see that it’s really him.”

Perhaps Thomas wanted to see more than the holes in Jesus’ flesh.

Maybe he just wanted to see the hands of the friend and teacher he loved.

The hands that waved him over when it was time to gather and listen.

The hands that held him up when he was struggling under the weight of a worry or fear.

The hands that broke the bread and poured the wine they shared at the table.

The hands that washed his feet on the last night they were together.

The hands of the carpenter who had set down his tools and turned to shepherding the lost and the lowly as a servant to all.

I imagine that Thomas needed to see those familiar hands, complete with all the marks and scars and calluses that would let him know that this truly was his beloved teacher and friend.

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor shares the story of a dear friend of hers who was walking around with an open wound after his father died suddenly,

until he finally found closure in his father’s hands.

Her friend had rushed to the hospital only to be told that his father had died of a heart attack and the body had already been taken away.

He could not believe that his father was truly gone, and he lamented that he did not get the chance to say goodbye.

It was only when he saw his father’s body at the funeral home, and he took his father’s hands in his own, that acceptance began to set in. 

The man’s father was an auto mechanic, and his hands held a lifetime of scars and grease stains that would never be washed away. 

Taylor tells us her friend turned his father’s hands over in his own and upon seeing the calluses and motor oil stains, he smiled and said, “It’s him. They tried to clean him up, but look, they couldn’t. It’s my daddy. It’s really him.” 1

I imagine that Thomas wanted to do the same.

He wanted to hold Jesus’ hands in his own.

To see not just the wounds he suffered on the day he died, but also the familiar nicks and scars acquired from years of hard work – the marks that Thomas had come to know.

He needed to see to believe.   Because otherwise it would never seem real.

Would any of us admit to not wanting the same when we’ve lost someone we love?

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who believe without seeing.”

But he wasn’t talking about the disciples – the friends who knew and loved him in his lifetime. None of them had believed without seeing.

I don’t think Jesus expected them to; otherwise the empty tomb would have been enough.

There would have been no need for Jesus to appear in the garden where Mary was weeping,

in the locked room where the disciples were shaking in fear,

on the beach where the fishermen had gathered to share a grief filled meal,

or on the road to Emmaus where many were leaving in despair.

When Jesus said, “Blessed are those who believe without seeing”

he was talking about those who would come later.

Those who would hear this story of the resurrected messiah but who would never know Jesus in his lifetime, nor carry real grief in their hearts after experiencing his death.

Jesus was blessing the church with his words. He was blessing us.

For we have no choice but to believe without seeing.

We only know the Easter story from the other side.

We know the hope and new life that can come after death and despair.

But for many of us the resurrection can only be understood metaphorically, to think of it literally is beyond our capacity of believing without seeing.

We tell ourselves that it should be enough to see Jesus alive and working in the world around us through the people who walk in his footsteps.

We shouldn’t need to see his hands to know that he lives on in our hearts.

But, like the disciples, we do need to know that it is human to doubt.

Seeing is believing but we can’t always believe what we see.

Those of us who looked at a blue and black dress and insisted it was white and gold can attest to that.

The good news is that Jesus always meets us where we are in our doubt.

He doesn’t judge. He doesn’t scold.

And no matter how many times he comes to us and finds us huddled in a room with the door shut, keeping ourselves and the gospel locked away, he continues to say, “Peace be with you” - and then show us his hands

As if to say, here are my wounds, here are my scars, here are the hands that will always be resting on your shoulders, and nudging you to go out into the world and overcome your fear.

Thomas is not scorned for his doubt, rather he is lifted up for his humanness.

Thomas is every disciple and Thomas is us.

Which is why it is important that we hear his story at least once a year.

I sometimes wish we read this passage on Easter Sunday.

Because as much as we need to hear this story here on the Sunday after Easter, the folks who come only on Easter and Christmas need to hear it even more.

The folks who hear the stories of Jesus’ birth and resurrection and leave thinking that the church does not change from year to year.

Because they hear these miraculous stories and they may feel they have no relevance to their every day 21^st century lives.

But they miss what happens next in the story.

They miss the stories that come after Christmas that focus on the nitty-gritty every day lives of the disciples and the example that Jesus set with his ministry,

and they miss the stories that come after Easter, where the disciples confront their doubts and try to make sense of the resurrection and live out the gospel in a post-Jesus world.

But if folks aren’t coming here to hear the gospel as often as they should, perhaps part of our work to overcome our post-resurrection doubt and fear involves taking the gospel to them.

We’re called to step out of the locked room and live our lives out in the world following the ways of Christ as much as we can – Being radically inclusive with our hospitality, with our compassion, with our forgiveness, with our love.

To live as if we’ve witnessed the resurrection ourselves.

And to extend Christ’s hands into a world that is in desperate need of seeing and believing.

Amen.

---

1 “Hands and Feet”, Home By Another Way, Barbara Brown Taylor, Cowley Publications (January 25, 1997)

Easter Sunrise Sermon: "An Idle Tale"

The Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

April 5, 2015 – Easter Sunrise

Luke 24:1-12

“An Idle Tale”

Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women who were with them. 

According to the gospel of Luke, these are the first witnesses to the miracle of the Resurrection.  Luke tells us that these five or six or possibly seven or more women were the first to see the empty tomb on that first Easter morning.

Not all the gospel writers agree about this.

As many of you may know we have four different gospel accounts of this miraculous story.

The gospel of Mark tells us that there were just three women who saw the empty tomb on Easter Morning - Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and a woman named Salome.

The gospel of Matthew tells us that there were just two women at the tomb – Mary Magdalene and a woman only identified as the other Mary.

Finally, the gospel of John tells us that there was only one woman present there that first Easter morning – Mary Magdalene – she came to the tomb alone to anoint Jesus’ body and discovered that the stone had been rolled away.

What is amazing about these four different gospel accounts of that first Easter morning is not that there were seven women, or three, or two, or only one.

The amazing thing is that in every one of these accounts, the most miraculous and faith-inspiring event in all of Christian history – the Resurrection of Jesus Christ – hinges on the testimony, the eyewitness accounts, of women.

In our time, we may not think that this detail is significant,

but in the time that these particular women lived it was very significant.

In a culture and age where women often could not testify in court because their testimony was considered unreliable,

in a religious tradition that recognized the authority of only its male members,

in sacred scriptures that tell the story of the people of God by mentioning 956 men by name, and only 188 women….

here, in the Easter story, women have been trusted to carry the greatest news of all time – the tomb is empty – Christ has risen indeed.

Men do make an appearance in the story in all four gospels.

They peer into the tomb, they scratch their head in amazement, they accuse the women of telling idle tales, and they return to their homes not believing and not understanding what they have seen.

But it is the women who are told to run to Galilee, to run to tell the disciples, to run and tell everyone what they have seen.

In a post-Jesus world, these women become the first Christian evangelists.

The first preachers of the gospel.

The first to tell the world the GOOD NEWS,

that Jesus has risen from the grave - and Death has not won.

Standing here in 21^st century New England, we may shrug our shoulders and say, “So what?”

It may not matter to us who was the first to find the empty tomb.

Dwelling on this detail of the story may not make it any less true - or any more true - for any of us.

Wrapping our head around this ancient story of a resurrected Christ – and believing it to be TRUE – with a capital T - may be difficult enough without nitpicking over who was the first to find Jesus’ tomb empty.

But this detail does make a difference.

These women, who had little power and little status in their communities.

These women, who were often overlooked and lived their lives in the background.

These women, who were rarely given a voice in the public forum and who were thought to be telling “idle tales” when they did speak.

These women represented those whom Christ had come to set free.

The marginalized, the powerless, the voiceless – of all genders, of all nationalities, of all races, languages, and religions.

In his life, and in his teachings, Jesus talked a lot about this NEW kingdom – this NEW world – that God was creating through him.

He talked about pulling down the mighty and lifting up the lowly. 

Not to liberate just those on the bottom of the pile in an imbalanced system, but to liberate those on top as well. 

Because those of us who are ruled by a desire for more power, more money, more resources, are not free.

Fear is our master.

Fear of not having enough. Fear of losing all that we have.

Fear that causes us to question whether everyone is as deserving or worthy of receiving what God has given to us all. 

When Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor and the meek" for they shall inherit this NEW kingdom of God, he was not saying that the rich and the powerful are evil, rather he was saying that we all are equally as likely to be entrapped by the fear that causes us to build these systems of power in the first place.

The empty tomb – the first sign of Jesus’ resurrection – was evidence that God was doing something NEW in the world.

Death did not win.  

Those with the most power, resources, and might, did not win.

Those who were threatened by Jesus’ teachings about God’s unconditional love and unlimited mercy did not win.

The tomb was empty.

Jesus did not die.  

Love conquered fear.

And those set free would be the first to tell the world.

The fact that these eyewitness accounts of women even made it into the Bible – in all four gospels no less – is often lifted up as evidence that these stories of the Resurrection are true.

Because if you lived in 1^st century Palestine and were going to make up a story about a resurrected Messiah that you wanted others to believe to be true wouldn’t you make your first eyewitness someone worthy of trust in your time – someone with power, and authority, and influence?

Who would believe the idle tales of women?

And yet here we stand on this Easter morning, some 2000 years later.

None of us was there to see the empty tomb ourselves.

We did not encounter the risen Christ in the garden.

And it’s likely that few of us put much faith in relics like the Shroud of Turin or an ancient nail in a piece of wood that has been offered as proof of Jesus’ execution and resurrection.

But something about this story has brought each of here this morning.

We pulled ourselves out of bed before the sun came up, and came out here to stand on this still frozen green….because there is something about this story that resonates with us.

Perhaps it’s the hope of finding the unexpected. The hope of the resurrection.

Because something inside of is dying or has died…and we’re desperate to hear that something new will grow in its place.

Perhaps we’re here because we’re grieving. Because we’ve lost someone we love…someone we can’t replace…. and before our heart breaks wide open we need to hear a story about grief bursting into joy.

Perhaps we’re here because we’ve had enough of death in general.

Because we’ve stood next to too many tombs and lost too many people to cancer, to illness, to addiction, to heartbreakingly random accidents that defy all explanation… but since Jesus lived again, maybe, just maybe death is not the absolute ending that we fear it to be.

Or perhaps we’re just weighed down with the heaviness of this world.

We’ve grown weary of hearing about children dying in wars, students being shot on college campuses, people killing each other over money, power, resources, race, and religion.

Yet if Jesus found the strength in his dying breath to say, “Father forgive them,” maybe we can find that strength as well.

Perhaps we’re here because we’re looking for hope.

The hope that God has something new planned for this world.

The hope that God has something new planned for us.  

The women who gathered at Jesus’ tomb on that first Easter morning experienced firsthand the new thing that God was doing in the world.

And now these women have become an integral part of the Easter story.

People the world over, throughout the ages have heard their testimony and believed.

Every Easter, we become these women.

Peering into the tomb.

Looking for a reason to go on.

And finding something surprising and new to give us hope.

Christ has risen, indeed.

Alleluia, and Amen!

Sermon: "For God So Loved the World..."

Scripture Texts

Numbers 21:4-9

Our Old Testament text this morning is one that may not be familiar to many of us. It’s a story from the Jewish Exodus – the time when the Israelites spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness looking for the Promised Land.

Typically, Exodus stories share a common theme - the people complain about the conditions they’ve had to endure, God threatens to punish them for their lack of faith, and then a miraculous event occurs to show them that God will always provide.

When the people complain that they’re hungry, God rains manna down from heaven. When they complain that they’re thirsty, God brings forth a stream of gushing water from a rock. But the story we’re about to hear has a bit of a twist.

In this story, the people complain about their living conditions and God sends them snakes. Yes, snakes. But not just any snakes, these are poisonous snakes and the text tells us that many people died from their bites.

While we may find this element of the story unsettling it serves to set up the miraculous event that we know is coming. God instructs Moses to make a snake out of bronze and place it on a pole and it becomes a symbol of healing. All who look upon it will live.  The takeaway lesson for the Israelites here is that God has the power to punish transgressions, but for those who show remorse and seek forgiveness, healing is always offered.

Here is the text from the book of Numbers. Listen for the word of God.

⁴From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. ⁵The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” ⁶Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. ⁷The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. ⁸And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” ⁹So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. 

John 3:14-21

Our gospel text this morning takes us back to the story from the Jewish Exodus that we just read.  Here Jesus mentions Moses lifting up the serpent on the pole as a reference to the source of healing and renewed life that it became, and then he reveals that he too is destined to be lifted up in a similar way and offered as a source of life and healing for all.

This is the gospel passage that contains the familiar verse that we see printed on signs at sporting events, on billboards, and on bumper stickers.

John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…”

In this passage, Jesus is responding to Nicodemus – a Pharisee who comes to Jesus in the middle of the night to learn more about who he is and why he has come. 

Nicodemus said to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him."   Jesus responds by affirming that not only has he been sent by God, but he has been sent by God with a world changing purpose.

His purpose is to be the light that pulls people out of the darkness. He was sent not to pass judgment on the world, but to save it from destroying itself.

This is a powerful message, and for a people who had for centuries carried the image of Moses holding the snake aloft on a pole as a source of God’s healing power, they would soon learn how Jesus being lifted up on the cross would come to take on a similar meaning for all.

Here is the passage from the Gospel of John.

Listen for the word of God.

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.

But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” 

 

The Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

March 15, 2015 – Fourth Sunday in Lent

Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21

“For God So Loved the World…”

When I sat down earlier this week and looked at the lectionary texts for today I felt a bit like Indiana Jones when he was about to descend into a cavernous underground chamber to search for the Holy Grail.

The chamber was dark so he dropped a lighted torch into it and he saw thousands of slithering serpents covering the floor below.  Then he looked up to the heavens and uttered the famous words, “Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?”

While I personally don’t have an overt fear of snakes, many of us do.

According to a recent Gallup poll, snakes top the list of things that people fear the most.

56% of us fear snakes more than we fear heights, confined spaces, getting a disease, or public speaking.

Hollywood actor and leading man Matt Damon is so afraid of snakes that when he was making the movie "We Bought a Zoo" he openly wept when snakes were brought onto the set.    His co-star Scarlett Johansson says she watched Damon "rock back and forth and cry like a baby” while the snakes were positioned all over the set.

He wasn’t acting - he was absolutely terrified.

Anthropologists believe that our fear of snakes is genetic.

It’s built into our human DNA because there was a time in our ancient past when giant snakes roamed the earth and ate our ancestors for breakfast.

As children we’re taught by our parents to fear some things – running into the street, touching a hot stove - but our fear of snakes seems to be innate.

In fact, we human beings are freakishly adept at spotting snakes in the wild even when they’re hidden.    Studies of the region of the brain that handles fear response have shown the human brain reacts to seeing a snake before it has cognitively processed the image — in other words, we can be scared of a snake before we even know it's there.

Which explains why God rained serpents down from heaven when his children were misbehaving. He knew they would scare the bejeesus out of us.

Knowing that we have an innate fear of snakes also helps us understand why Moses was told to place a bronze serpent on the end of a pole and have the people look at it as a source of healing and protection.

While this may seem counterintuitive to us, it was actually quite common for people to do this in ancient times. In primitive cultures a snake placed on the end of a pole was thought to ward off plagues and evil spirits.

Displaying an image of the thing that was feared the most was believed to unleash a certain sympathetic magic that led its maker to feel protected.  If you wanted to keep the lions away, you carved a statue of a lion and placed it outside your hut.

Primitive peoples in all parts of the world have practiced this kind of sympathetic magic -- but we’re not accustomed to encountering it in the Bible, where God is seen as the one true source of protection and healing, not idols or magic statues.

Here we might say that it’s not the snake on the pole that is warding off evil spirits but it is God working through the symbol of the snake.

It is God who offers forgiveness to the complaining Israelites and it is God who heals them of their wounds.

But we may wonder why this story is included in today’s lectionary.

Apart from Jesus referencing the text in his response to Nicodemus, what does this story about God sending poisonous snakes to kill misbehaving Israelites have to do with Jesus’ assertion that God so loves the world?

In fact, we may wonder how God could love the world when we have so many bible stories that focus on God’s anger and disappointment with the world. Adam and Eve, Sodom and Gomorrah, Noah and the flood, the Egyptians and the plagues, and these stories from the Exodus where God grows tired of hearing his people complain and decides to send poisonous snakes to take them out one by one. 

These are the stories that often make us squirm because they don’t quite jive with our image of a loving, merciful, and benevolent God.

In fact, some of us have such a hard time making sense of these stories that we feel compelled to draw a distinction between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament.

We might say, “I’m not comfortable with the angry wrathful God of the Old Testament. I much prefer the God of the New Testament – the God that is full of compassion and mercy” -  the God who so loved the world, that he sent his only son to gift us with eternal life.

The reality is there isn’t an Old Testament God and a New Testament God, there isn’t a Jewish God and a Christian God. There is one God.

And the Bible is simply a reflection of the thousands of ways that we have of interpreting and envisioning that one God over the course of time.

The bible contains thousands of stories, and yet it is one story.

It’s possible to read the whole of scripture as God’s love story for the world.

From the creation story in Genesis, to the wilderness wandering in Exodus, to the lamenting and rejoicing of the Psalms and Prophets, to the Jesus stories of the Gospels, to the building of the first churches in Acts and Paul’s letters, to the end of days predictions in Revelation.

God so loved the world that God chose to create it, act in it, and save it from self-destruction. 

As with any love story there are times of wedded bliss and there are times of turbulence.

Communication breaks down, things are said and done that both partners regret, angry words are exchanged, tears are shed, and at some point each party may threaten to leave and give up on the whole relationship if the other doesn’t agree to change, to listen or do more, to not take the other for granted or assume that love and grace is there for the taking without a reciprocal offer of the same. 

This love story that God has written with the world requires active participation by us.

As with any relationship, our relationship with God asks us to make ourselves vulnerable, to take risks, to open ourselves up to change and the possibility that we’ll feel hurt or disappointed when things don’t go the way we expect them to…

because the act of opening our hearts to love leaves us open to experiencing pain as well.

We may not believe that a loving and compassionate God would threaten to strike us down or send poisonous snakes to harm us if we misbehave.

These stories we find in the Old Testament may simply be the interpretation of a people who lived in a chaotic time in which their world had been turned upside down – where God was thought to be both protector and punisher – and the God who gave them life could and would just as easily take it away.

What may be easier for us to conceive of in these stories, and in our time, is a God who responds to our pain by taking what we fear most and turning it into a source of healing.

Putting the snake up on a pole was God’s way of taking a real and visceral fear that we human beings share and subverting its power by making it a vehicle for healing.  

God did much the same with Jesus.

God so loved the world that God gave us his only begotten son….

to be Emmanuel – God with us in the world.

To teach us, to lead us, to challenge us, to show us that we can be so much more than we believe we are capable of being.

But humanity’s response to being challenged in this way was to shrink back in fear…and to take the source of its fear – this man named Jesus who pushed people to move way outside of their comfort zone – and eliminate him.

Driven by their fear, the people did what they had been doing to each other for thousands of years….They put Jesus up on a cross and watched the life drain out of him.

And then God did something amazing.

God took the cross - this object of pain and suffering, of violence and death - and turned it into a source of healing and renewed life.

Jesus would live again.

Death would not have the last word.

Violence would not have the last word.

Fear would not have the last word.

The journey to the cross would become a journey towards liberation.

The walk we take with Jesus through Holy Week would serve to bring us closer to God because we know that God through Jesus experienced our suffering and our pain.

And the death we experience through Jesus would become a symbol of how we are called to die to our old selves and be born into a new life in Christ.

God takes our fears and converts them into sources of healing.

Because it is through the act of acknowledging and confronting our fears that we diminish their power.

Whatever it is that we fear – death or illness, losing our home or job or sense of security, facing our addictions or afflictions, revealing our greatest failures or deepest secrets, asking for or granting forgiveness – we can loosen the grip our fear has on us by giving it over to God and letting God use it as a conduit for healing and renewal.

What is it that you fear?

What if you took this fear that you’ve been hiding in the darkened recesses of your heart and stuck it up on a pole so you could get a better look at it?

How might God use this fear to heal you – to liberate you – to make you whole once again?

We may not completely lose our fear of snakes by sticking an image of a serpent up on a pole - but we can lessen its power to unhinge us by seeing it as a potential source of healing rather than pain.

In Greek mythology, Asclepius is the God of healing and medicine.

He carries a staff entwined by a serpent, which has come to be known as the Rod of Asclepius.

We use this symbol today on hospital signs, doctor’s badges, ambulances, and on anything associated with the medical professions.

Snakes, as it turns out, are healing after all.

For God so loved the world…

God gave us life.

And the purpose of our life is to live in relationship…

with God, with creation, and with each other.

And God gave us Jesus.

To teach us how to live our life in relationship.

And when we reject this gift, and push it away in fear.

God gives it back to us,

Again, and again, again.

For God so loved the world…

Amen. 

 

Sermon: "Rainbows in the Wilderness"

The Rev. Maureen Frescott

The Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

February 22, 2015 – First Sunday of Lent

Genesis 9:8-17; Mark 1:9-15

“Rainbows in the Wilderness”

The other day, I saw a sign that someone had posted in front of their house that read, 
“I’m giving up snow for Lent.” 

If only it were that easy.

On this first Sunday of Lent, we may already feel like we’ve been wandering in the wilderness for 40 days.

After a relatively mild December the first snowfall of January was celebrated.  Many of us remarked at how pretty the world looked under a blanket of white, the skiers rejoiced, and teachers and students relished having a snow day after getting halfway into winter without one.

Now just 4 weeks later, after being pummeled with storm after storm, enduring sub zero temperatures, and having classes, meetings, worship services, and other activates continually cancelled due to snow and ice, dangerous wind chills, and the threat of collapsing roofs, many of us have already grown tired of wandering in this winter wilderness.

Which is why, here on the threshold of Lent, the thought of embarking on a 40-day trek into a time of penitence and self-sacrifice may not sound very appealing.

Not when all we want to do is walk outside without having to put on six layers of clothing.

When we long to see green grass and the reds and pinks and yellows of spring flowers, and when we’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel the warmth of the sun upon our face.

Then again, maybe all this winter wilderness wandering has gotten us exactly where we need to be on the first Sunday in Lent.

Because right about now, we could all stand to get a glimpse of a rainbow.

As we begin our Lenten journey, we may wonder why the lectionary gives us the story of Noah’s ark with its imagery of God placing a rainbow in the sky.

Rainbows are beautiful, joyous, and uplifting and not at all what we expect to encounter in this season of wilderness, with its focus on repentance and mortality.

In fact, in recognition of the more somber tone of this season we’ve even buried the Hallelujahs, as we symbolically and literally walked the word out of the darkened sanctuary a few nights ago on Ash Wednesday.  

I doubt any of us were thinking about rainbows then, as we lined up to receive an ashen cross upon our forehead… to remind us that from dust we have come and to dust we shall return.

As Pastor Dick shared in his Ash Wednesday reflection, it’s not often in our culture that we’re asked to think about our own mortality.

It makes us feel uncomfortable.

I suspect that many of us went home that night after the service and took a look at ourselves in the mirror – whether right away or before going to bed – and were momentarily startled when we saw that unfamiliar mark on our face.

How peculiar that in this age of reality TV, graphic news footage, and internet oversharing, where nothing we see seems shocking anymore, that a smudge of dirt in a place where we don’t expect it to be can give us pause.

But that’s the point.

This is the reason why we still practice this ancient ritual of marking ourselves with ash at the beginning of Lent – to remind us that no matter where we find ourselves in our lives – be it languishing in the depths of feeling weak or small, or puffed up with an inflated sense of our own worth or power – we are all made of dust, and we’re all equally beloved by our Creator, God.

Lent is the great equalizer – during these 40 days we’re asked to consider the ways in which we’ve fallen short in our love for one another, for ourselves, and for God, while at the same time being reminded of the radical inclusivity of that love, and the fact that God offers it unconditionally to us all.

This journey that we take with Jesus to the cross is meant to be a time of introspection and self correction – a kind of weeding of the garden - that prepares us for the renewal and resurrection that we experience on Easter Sunday.

So what does Noah and the rainbow have to do with Lent?

Apart from the 40 days of rain that fell upon the earth and the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness, what is the connection between these two biblical stories?

We might say that in the Noah story creation and humanity itself endured a period of testing or breaking down similar to what Jesus experienced in the wilderness, but unlike Jesus, not everybody passed the test and made it onto the ark.

Some of you may remember the Farside cartoon from a few years ago that shows two dinosaurs standing on an island as the floodwaters rise around them while they watch Noah’s Ark sail off without them. One of the dinosaurs turns to the other and says, “Oh crap, was that TODAY?”

The reality is that Lent is not about being tested or making sacrifices so God will pronounce us as being worthy of love, grace, and redemption.

It’s about recognizing that God has already done that.

But unless we take the time to nurture our relationship with God we may never realize it.

The covenant we have with God is that God offers us love and grace, and we offer ourselves in loving relationship, to God and to each other.

In the Noah story, the rainbow is a sign of this covenant.

In this ancient story, after God flooded the earth and essentially wiped the world clean of what was seen as Creation gone wrong, leaving only Noah and his family, and whatever pairings of animals he could fit in the ark, the waters receded and God symbolically placed a rainbow in the sky as a sign and a promise that the slate would never be wiped clean again.

Because we are far removed from the age in which this story was written we may not fully grasp how monumental this promise – this covenant – was.

If you’re a student of history then you may know that the flood story we have in our bible is not the only ancient flood story that exists.

Mesopotamia, Greek mythology, indigenous people in North and South America, Hindu religious texts, and African tribal cultures all have stories of deities who flooded the earth to cleanse it of a violent and disobedient humanity in preparation for rebirth.

In many of these stories a few special human beings are warned and advised to build a boat and to fill it with animals.

While scholars can only speculate about the origin of these stories and whether they’re based on a real flood event in our ancient past or a shared mythology from a common ancestor, the difference we see in the story told by the people of Israel is found in the rainbow.

Theirs is the only story that speaks of God making a covenant with humanity.

The rainbow here is a symbolic representation of an archers bow -

the weapon that warrior gods used to fire arrows in the form of lightning bolts against their enemies. 

But the people of Israel envisioned God hanging up this archers bow, as if to say, “I will use it against you no more.” 

This bow hanging in the sky was to be a sign of the covenant that God made with Noah and his ancestors, and with all of creation.

And it’s a sign of the covenant that God has made with us.

Like the rainbow after the storm, God is there with us as we pick up the pieces.

The truth is that God is always with us, even during the darkest days when the rain is pouring down and the flood waters (or snow banks) are up to our neck, but it’s comforting to have that reminder when the storm clouds move on – to see that bow of color in the sky and take a deep cleansing breath because we know the worst has passed and God is still there with us, as the healing and renewal begins.

God does not send the floodwaters to test us.

God sends the rainbow to let us know that God’s presence is always with us.

This is something that Jesus likely knew when he walked into the wilderness.

As we’ve said, the writer of Mark’s gospel is brief – he doesn’t describe the temptations that Jesus faced.

But none of the gospel writers tell us that Jesus felt the need to prepare himself to endure those 40 days of fasting and testing.

He doesn’t undergo any training, go on a special diet, or complete a series of meditative exercises. 

He doesn’t learn any new fighting skills, or self-help strategies.

We don’t see him lifting weights, punching a speed bag, or running up the Temple steps, while “Eye of the Tiger” plays in the background.

He simply gets up out of the River Jordan, with the water from his baptism still dripping down his face and he walks into the wilderness.

There’s little wonder why.

He has just heard the voice of God.

A voice that said,

“You are my son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

That’s the only preparation, the only reassurance, that he needed.

The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness calls attention to our greatest temptation -- the temptation to think that God is not present with us, at all times.

Jesus knew he was not alone when he went to a place where he could search his own heart without distraction.

He knew that God was with him as he faced the temptations and doubts that he feared might keep him from walking the path that God had set before him….the one that would ultimately lead to the cross.

And Jesus knew that God would be with him still when it was over,

when the cross was taken down, when the pain finally subsided,

and life flowed into him once again.

Lent is about nurturing our relationship with God.

By seeking communion through prayer and reflection.

By seeking restoration through examining our shortcomings and accepting that we could do with more love and less fear in our lives.

But Lent is also about envisioning the resurrection and renewal that awaits us all at the end of our time in the wilderness.

It is likely that by the end of these 40 days before us,

when the calendar turns over from March into April,

we may still have some snow on the ground.

On Easter morning, when many of us stand out on the town green at sunrise singing hallelujah once again, we may do so with lingering piles of snow at our feet.

But the air will have warmed,

the soil will have loosened,

and the first shoots of spring will be poised to push through to the light above.

We will get there.

We may have to endure another 40 days of winter wilderness to get there,

but we will get there.

In the meantime, look for the rainbows.

Look for the signs of God’s presence in your life.

Spend some time imagining what a resurrected YOU might look like.

And reflect on the promise that God makes to each of us.

To be with us, to love us, and to make us new, over and over again.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.