I tried to start writing this
sermon on Thursday (my normal sermon writing day).  This is one of
the challenges of Holy Week: in order to prepare worship services and
sermons you have to be out of sync with experiencing it.  On Thursday
we remember Jesus’ last night with his disciples.  In Matthew, Mark,
and Luke (the “synoptic gospels”), Jesus adds symbolism to the
Passover meal during in the Last Supper, which is the model for our
communion.  In John, Jesus instead washes the feet of the disciples,
modeling for them the behavior he hoped would define their
relationships after his death: that they would be known by how
lovingly they treated each other.

Truly, I love remembering those
stories in Holy Thursday worship. There is a stillness to our
celebrations, a knowing of what will come next, that I suspect
pervaded the actual night Jesus sat with his disciples, but primarily
there are blessings.

On this Holy Thursday, as I sat
to write an Easter sermon, the news was shouting about the “Mother
of All Bombs” being dropped for the first time in history.  It was
a shocking amount of violence. I was still recovering from the shock
of not quite a week before when 59 bombs had been dropped, and from
the chemical weapons that had been used days before that on
civilians.

It wasn’t just the direct
violence though.  As I sat to write on Thursday, I was thinking about
the vulnerable people in the world and their struggles.  Many in this
church have been actively advocating for the care of our immigrant
sisters and brothers, and yet I keep hearing of young families torn
apart. As many in this church have helped the clean up in Middleburgh
after horrible floods, I was part of the clean up in the Southern
Tier in 2011.  The increase in extreme weather has already impacted
so many lives, and yet in the midst of this crisis for human life on
earth, our country is doing less and less to prevent it.  Lives
continued to be lost and impacted by floods and droughts, mudslides
and major storms.

There was more, all piling on
top of each other on Holy Thursday.  I love our breakfast program and
SUSTAIN ministry (I think they embodies the command to be known by
how well we love), but I hate that they are necessary! I’m so
grateful to serve a church willing to discuss white privilege and
racism, but I’m sick and tired of white privilege and racism.  I’m
tired of fighting for fair and equal funding for Schenectady city
schools, which like most schools with mostly brown and black students
in New York gets the short end of the stick.  I’m exhausted fighting
for LGBTQIA lives in The United Methodist Church, and just annoyed
that homophobia still defines our church at large.  I am grateful for
my co-teachers in confirmation teaching about sexual harassment this
week, but as we’d reiterated how common it is, I was horrified but it
all, all over again.  That is to say, the pile of problems I was
attending to, while trying to write an Easter sermon, was pretty
large.  

That may explain why on Holy
Thursday, when I sat to write and I asked myself the question “what
does Easter mean today?” in the depth of my mind I heard a small
and terrified voice ask “is even Easter enough given the
brokenness of the world?”

It is very hard to write an
Easter sermon on Holy Thursday.  Luckily I had to put it down to go
the Maundy Thursday service we shared with Emmanuel Friedans.  My
roles included reading the story of foot washing from John 13 and to
inviting those present to allow me to wash their feet.  The foot
washing story is the narrative example of the command to the
disciples at the end of chapter: that they would be known by how
lovingly they treated each other.
It is a defining moment differentiating the ways of the
world from the ways of Jesus.
While “important” people in the world are served by those said
to be “less important” than they are, in the Jesus movement all
of us are asked to love and serve each other. Instead of dominating
others, Jesus used his life to support them, and he asked us to
follow in his ways.

Having heard the foot washing
story explained when I was 13,  I desperately wanted to be a part of
it!  It started my call to ministry, this desire to be a part of
turning upside down the values of the world and what it looks like to
live a life that matters.  I wanted to be part of a movement that was
known by how lovingly it treated its own members (and beyond). I was
drawn in.  Foot washing is one of the stories that grounds me in my
faith.  So, while in the most hidden parts of my brain I was
wondering if Easter was enough, I stood at microphone and the story
out loud, and everything clicked back into place.  

Sure, things aren’t great right
now, and many of God’s beloved people are hurting.  Then again,
that’s how it was during Jesus’ time too.  The vast majority of the
Jewish people living in Judea and Galilee were struggling to survive.
The peasant class was about 95% of the population, and they tended
to die young, after a life of hunger and hard labor.  Families were
torn apart by poverty and debt, because family members were sold into
slavery so that the remaining members could eat. Things REALLY
weren’t going well for the people, back in Jesus’ day.  The system
existed to make the rich and powerful more and more wealthy, on the
backs and the lives of the peasants.  The narrative of the Empire was
that they were the peace bearers, and yet the reality was that they
were the oppressors who kept fighting at a minimum because of the
power of their military might, and kept their military mighty by
paying them from the profits they reaped from the peasants.

Jesus’ life and ministry was
with the peasants in Galilee (although he did take some side trips to
Judea and Samaria).  He saw the humanity of the peasants, listened to
them and ate with them.  His healings were for them, and his
teachings designed to teach them.  He was known as a great teacher
and healer, but the stories in the gospels also indicate that his was
a ministry of presence among the people.  He loved the people with
God’s love for them. He showed them they mattered to him by being
present with them.

The peasants were seen by the
Empire as a means of wealth production, and at the same time as a
potential threat to the famous peace.  They were seen by Jesus as
beloved children of God worth his time, energy, and passion.  As
his fame grew and his ministry became well known, he continued to
spend his time with the people living in poverty.  His life showed
that the people the Empire found expendable, God finds worthwhile.
It may be that the most powerful piece of the story isn’t in any one
of the parables, healings, or teachings, but rather that they
happened primarily among the peasants, reiterating God’s care for
all people.  One of the most significant pieces of Jesus’ ministry
was his presence.

Each Gospel tells a unique
Easter story, and Matthew is no exception.  The piece of Matthew’s
story that strikes me this year is that he suggests that the women
continued Jesus’ ministry of presence for Jesus at the end of
his life. They were at his crucifixion (27:55), they were at his
burial (27:61), and they were there on Easter morning.  They held
vigil.  They stayed, even when it was too late. They weren’t there to
change things.  They were just with him.  Based on how clear the
Gospels are about the women being present, I suspect that in
retrospect the disciples were grateful to the women for staying and
being present when they had run away. Jesus wasn’t alone in his death
and his body was cared for afterward, because the women continued
his ministry of presence,
a form of loving Jesus as Jesus had loved them.

And then, in the midst of their
ministry of presence, they are greeted by the angel.  As if that
wasn’t awesome enough, immediately afterward they experience the
presence of Jesus again! The NRSV says that Jesus “met them.” It
means both that he “joined” them and “accompanied” them.¹
His presence was returned to them, and the Christian story ever
since is that the presence of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, has remained
with us.

Both the angel at the tomb and
Jesus ask the women to convey to the male disciples that he’ll meet
them again in Galilee.  This is especially significant.  First, it
reiterates that the presence of Jesus has returned.  Secondly, when
Jesus says it he calls the disciples “his brothers.”  They had
denied and abandoned him, and nothing that they had yet done had
changed that reality.  They hadn’t repented, or apologized, or shown
back up.  Yet Jesus calls them his brothers, which was an upgrade
from their previous titles.  As it often is in the Bible, grace and
forgiveness come from God’s nature alone.  As Eugene Boring says in
the commentary in the New Interpreter’s Bible,
“The women become not only missionaries of the resurrection
message, but also agents of reconciliation.”²
It would be the words of the women that would call them back together
and start the process of the disciples living the ministry of Jesus
in the world.  

Finally though, there is the
duplicated message to the disciples about going to GALILEE.  Why
Galilee?  Jesus was killed in Jerusalem, in Judea, where the final
phase of his ministry had occurred.  He was killed in the place he’d
rode into on a donkey, by the authority of those who saw his
indictment of the Temple. His body was placed in a tomb in Judea,
near Jerusalem.  Why were the disciple to meet him back in Galilee?

It
seems like there are three possible answers.  First, they were to go
back to the people Jesus had been in ministry with and continue the
ministry of presence among the most vulnerable people.  (Those in
Galilee were even more vulnerable than those in Judea.)  Secondly,
Galilee was more DIVERSE than Judea, and in Matthew Galilee is
referred to as Galilee of the Gentiles (4:15).  It was home to Jews,
and to the Gentiles.  This is one of Matthew’s references to the
universality of Jesus’ message, and that Galilee was the place to
expand God’s love beyond its traditional boundaries with the Jews
into all the world.  Third, and finally, to go back to Galilee was to
go back to the beginning.  It was home, for Jesus as well as for the
disciples, and it was where his ministry started and grew.
Easter marks the transition point, what had once been the ministry of
Jesus supported by the disciples becomes, on Easter, the ministry of
the disciples supported by Jesus.
They go back to Galilee to go back to the beginning and start the
story again, to be God’s presence to the people once again.  They
went back to continue the ministry of Jesus, the ministry of
presence, that the women had held up in the meantime.

The ah-ha moment I had in Maundy
Thursday worship was really pretty simple.  It is one I’ve had
before, even, I just had to remember.  The brokenness of the world is
very real indeed, and unconscionable things are happening.  But
instead of negating Easter, the brokenness of the world reminds us
of how much we need Easter!  Easter is, as Marcus Borg puts it,
“God’s yes to the world’s no.”  Easter affirms the life of
Jesus, who loved the people and was present to them, and Easter
affirms the commandment that the disciples continue his ministry and
be known by how lovingly they treated each other.
Easter is the explosion of the ministry of Jesus from one life
to many, the expansion of love from one human to many.

The world, like the Empire of
old, teaches us things that do harm.  It teaches us that there isn’t
enough for everyone, so we have to compete and we have to hoard.  The
world teaches us that some lives matter more than other lives, and
that since their isn’t enough we should take care of the lives that
matter first.  The world teaches us about borders that aren’t allowed
to be crossed and separations that aren’t allowed to become
connections.  The world teaches us to be afraid, and to be careful,
and to distrust those around us.  The world teaches us that the
economy matters most, and keeps us alive.  The world teaches us to
take care of ourselves and “ours” first.  

Easter is God’s yes to the
world’s no as well as God’s NO to the world’s YES..  Easter denies
the world’s fallacies and offers us alternatives.  Easter is a
resounding YES to the life and teachings of Jesus.  In the Gospel of
John, Jesus teaches us to be known by how lovingly we treat each
other. In  Easter, the
message of Jesus is passed on and expanded, given to us to live and
teach.  

It doesn’t mean that we can make
everything OK, at least not over the short run.  It doesn’t stop
weapons in in midair, reunite families, or reverse climate change.
But it does mean that we have received the command to be known by
lovingly we act, and that being present to God’s beloved people is
now our work (supported by Jesus).  Doing that will be plenty to
change the world.  Easter, it turns out, is more than enough.  Thanks
be to God.  Amen

1M.
Eugene Boring, New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VII: Matthew
Leander E. Keck editorial board convener (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1995) 500.

2 Ibid.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

April 16, 2017