Blog

Children of God (Living as Resurrection People)

Living as Resurrection People: Children of God

Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-5

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

Eastertide

May 13, 2012

Kyndall Renfro

I had no idea that future generations of believers would invent jokes about St. Peter standing at the pearly gates of heaven, asking why should God let you into heaven? For me, it was no joke. My name is Cornelius, and I literally sent my servants to Peter’s doorstep where they knocked on behalf. From miles away, my heart was thumping as if I was standing at the gates myself, one single question thudding in my heart: Will God accept me? It felt like Peter held my life, my fate, my destiny in his hands. I felt so indebted to him, in fact, that I bowed to him upon first meeting him, though I was a centurion and he a common man.

I had been close to God all my life—I was a praying man, and I hope, a generous one. I tried my best to live a moral life. But there grew within my soul a rumbling discontent . . . I sent for Peter, and though he was a stranger to me at the time, I was eager to see if he could help. 

But do you know one of the first things Peter said to me upon entering my home? “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him.” Every muscle in my body tightened at those words. I had invited my whole family, plus some close friends, every single one of us non-Jewish, and we bristled immediately at Peter’s sense of superiority. You could feel the tension in the room mounting.

“But,” Peter continued talking, “God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?”

And there we all stood, Peter smiling broadly, naively, proudly, like he’d said something clever and profound, my family and friends standing there un-flattered and uncomfortable, and me, stuck in the middle, feeling responsible for orchestrating this social disaster but somehow still wanting to hear what he was going to say next . . .

Today’s text from the book of Acts about the baptism of Cornelius and his family is the ending of a much lengthier story, the famous encounter between Peter, the Jew, and Cornelius, the Gentile. It is the story where Peter receives a vision from the Lord—the one where a sheet drops from heaven and God tells Peter he can now eat non-kosher animals, and Peter’s idea of the love of God is radically expanded to include even the Gentiles. Cornelius the centurion becomes the very first case-in-point.

When we read the book of Acts, I find our tendency is to read ourselves into the story as Peter, or as one of the Christian Jews. We are the church, the disciple, the insider with a choice to extend hospitality or not. Like Peter, we’ve been given the keys to heaven.

But since you and I are in fact, not Jewish, what if we read the story the other way? We are not Peter in this story. We are Cornelius. We are the outsider who doesn’t belong. We are the one desperate to know, “Will God accept me?” Can you relate to his angst? You’ve dabbled at being a praying man, perhaps, but it feels like your verdict is pending, the jury is still out, you can’t quite shake this fear that maybe you don’t belong.

How might it feel if Peter showed up at your house and promptly told you he is not allowed to associate with someone like you? Fortunately for you God just now told him in a vision involving unclean animals that he could be friends with you anyway, so here he is, ready to be let inside your home. I imagine it would be awkward, even offensive, to find that Peter had to be told in a vision that God would actually accept the likes of you. But when we bristle at being slighted, I doubt we are confident we belong and thus indignant at being refused. I think we bristle because we are afraid. Afraid that they might be right, that we aren’t really lovable. Recently I found myself trying to impress an old friend—someone who had rejected me in the past and now we were in the same room, and I caught myself trying to impress her. All these years later, and I still wanted her approval. At our core, we all want to know that we are loved, that we are lovable.

Which is why I assume that after the initial shock of Peter’s bad manners rubbed off, maybe you’d be able to hear the rest of what Peter had to say, which is that you are, in fact, somebody that God likes. The question thudding in your heart all those years, “Does God accept me?” is finally answered by none other than the socially-clumsy Peter. It comes as a surprise to him that God actually loves you, but you are able to forgive Peter for his short-sightedness, because you were short-sighted too. Despite your outward bravado, you had inwardly doubted all along that God’s love could extend as far as you.

No one starts life as a Peter, that is to say, an insider. We start as Corneliuses hovering around the edges of faith, trying to peek in, desperate for someone to extend hospitality, to tell us, Yes, God likes you. You are not unclean or un-presentable or unacceptable. You are deeply loved.

Cornelius is a story about the radical inclusiveness of the Christian family. Anyone and everyone can “get in” if they choose. And that’s disgruntling if you think about your grimy neighbor with the loud dogs or your greedy boss with the rude comments. But the real truth, of course, is that we desperately want in ourselves. We need acceptance, love, belonging. We are Cornelius.

Even after being drenched in the waters of baptism and blasted by the winds of the Holy Ghost, we can carry a bit of that Cornelius insecurity in our hearts. I believe it is this residue of fear and anxiety that turns us against our neighbor. Every Cornelius is in danger of becoming a vision-less version of Peter. What if Peter had not accepted the vision from God? Peter would have ended up like those of us who, once we’re “in,” set up boundaries—like a tall backyard fence to remind us daily, “You are home! You are safe! You belong.” But we did not consult God’s surveyor before we built the fence, and we built it way too far inside the property line. There is a whole world out there, full of people whom God loves but we have forgotten. Our yard is safe and small and comforting, and we like it that way. We do not have to face the dangers of the park, we do not have to look our neighbor in the face. This is my yard, and I get to decide to who comes in. But such exclusiveness means I no longer have a home; I have created a prison. God is in the business of setting captives free, but since I am so stubbornly camped behind the bars I built myself, God simply moves out and sets up camp elsewhere, somewhere spacious, with lots of room to roam and lots of people to play and eat with. Focused on my own insatiable need for security, I don’t realize that my backyard is now located outside the camp, that God has moved and I’ve stayed put. That His love was too big to be contained, so he had to move on, past my wimpy constraints.

Peter’s vision was just as crucial to Peter’s continuing conversion as it was to Cornelius. It would have been easier for Peter to reject the vision because a small container for faith is more comforting than an ever-expanding one. But to reject the vision would have been to force God to move elsewhere, would have been to deny the continuing work of the Holy Spirit, would have been to remove himself from the power of God’s love.

We can easily convince ourselves we love God in the privacy of our own yard, or surrounded by friends who are lot like us. But if we are not open to new visions of just how wide God’s mercy reaches, then our love of God is a delusion. If our love for others isn’t expanding, then our love of God is shriveling.

1 John puts it this way: Love God by loving His children; love God’s children by loving God. It’s rather circular, if you didn’t notice, but I think that’s point. You can’t have one without the other. John adds this to the mix: keep God’s commands. And what are God’s commands, pray tell? If we flip back to the Gospels, all God’s commands can be summed up as follows: Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. In summary? 1. Love God by loving your neighbor. 2. Love your neighbor by loving God. 3. Obey God’s commands, which are to love God and love your neighbor.

Cynthia Bourgeault explains it this way: that you cannot love God as an object. “God is always and only the subject of love. God is that which makes love possible . . . God is the place from which love emerges.”[1] In other words, the love of God means you’ve been set free and empowered to love other people. There is no love of God apart from a love for others. There is no private love for God, no exclusive relationship of love with God—there is only that love which causes you to embrace your neighbor. The love of God is that which fills you with love for others.

John also says such commands are not burdensome which makes you wonder where on earth he found people who were easy to love. But of course, he doesn’t really mean easy. By “not burdensome,” I think John means possible; I think he means we have divine help. I think he means Jesus went on ahead of us, and though Jesus’ love involved suffering and even death, Jesus proved to us that love conquers death.

We too will conquer if we believe that Jesus is the Son of God. To believe that God himself became human and entered our suffering is to believe that love is strong enough and big enough to break through every dividing wall. It was big enough to tear down the wall that isolating humanity from God; that means love is also big enough to tear down the wall separating humanity from humanity. Faith in the incarnation means we will overcome this world of hostility, as the love of God infuses our hearts and enables us to embrace our neighbor.

We are Corneliuses, you and I, desperate for God’s love and acceptance. We are Peters, too, stingy, perhaps, with the love that we do have, but open to new understanding that the love of God is bigger than we could have imagined. May the love of God convert our hostile hearts, again and again and again, and perhaps this icy hostile world will melt just a little because we loved it.

For the Love of God (Living as Resurrection People)

Living as Resurrection People: For the Love of God

John 10:11-18; 1 John 3:16-24

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

Eastertide

April 29, 2012

Kyndall Renfro

Pardon my language when I tell you that Anne Lamott says Easter “hope is about believing this one thing: that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.”[1] The 23^rd Psalm tells us (in PG language) that love is bigger than the valley of the shadow of death, and John tells us love is so big that it lays down its life for its friends. These are beautiful, Easter-sized sentiments, but they make love seem too big to get a handle on for a regular, non-heroic person like me. Laying down your life is rather lofty. I’m just trying to figure out how to love Nate when he forgets to wash his dishes. If only I could find the receipt, I’d like to return 1 John and exchange it for the beginner’s manual. This stuff is advanced. I wouldn’t even qualify as intermediate!

Like most people I find Love to be quite pleasant as an idea or as a dream but it is a near absurdity as a real-life situation. Real-life Love is elusive and complicated—hard to obtain and hard to live out. First of all, there is the Hollywood version to muddy the waters. The movies fashion for us a sort of pseudo-love where life is a fairy tale, and this idealism doesn’t help me much. The church tries to offer an alternative to Hollywood, but more often than not they have fashioned a pseudo-love too, where life is a straightforward line-up of right or wrong choices, and that over-simplification doesn’t help either. I hear the preachers say it again and again—love is a choice, not a feeling. And while John himself agrees that love is active, I don’t think he would go so far as to pretend like you can sterilize love of its feelings. But sometimes the church makes it sound like you can clean the emotions out of the way and reduce love down to the bare basics of a few simple choices. Simple choices can go a long way in a strained relationship, but we all know that loving another human being is never a simple act. Gosh, you cannot even love a dog without involving yourself in a mess. Even with pets, there is everything from dog slobber to dog cancer to contend with. Try to love a human, and nothing can protect you from heartache, longing, worry, disappointment, and the nauseating regularity of failure.

The encouraging news is that Christ first loved us, and thereby made it all possible. Yet it is sooo difficult to wrap our minds around the extravagance of divine love, harder still to feel wrapped up ourselves by its warm embrace. The divine love, despite its ferocious pursuit of us, is elusive, and it is no wonder with human models serving as our initiation into the experience of love. Most everyone has suffered the pains of human love: a relationship—parental, romantic, or otherwise—that was supposed to provide you safety, grant amnesty to your mistakes, and fill your empty places, but instead you were betrayed or ignored or just plain disappointed. How can we believe in the divine love when human love has often been a dissatisfying frustration?

I am slowly learning that even when I don’t have a good role model, I can be one, to myself. Yes. Love myself the way I want to be loved by others, because when I really stop to evaluate things, the biggest jerk in my life is often me. I am perfectly pleasant and respectable and forgiving towards other people. (At least, I try to be; I am a pastor after all.) But I am not pleasant and respectable and forgiving to myself. I am not a pastor to myself. I am a drill sergeant to myself, and not a very nice one.

Until recently, I found it confusing to talk about self-love because our tradition so emphasizes the sin of selfishness. It feels like we are being selfish to love ourselves. But there is a huge difference between selfishness on the one end and self-care on the other—the two are worlds apart. I find that the energy we expend on selfishness is driven by an underlying self-loathing, and we are trying desperately to satiate our own insecurity. By contrast, a healthy self-love frees us from the mad clamor. We become miraculously less self-conscious. When you love who you are, you are far less worried about how you appear to others, and you are freed up to do and be what really matters. Notice that in the text Christ lays down his life on his accord. It seems to me you cannot lay something down that you do not first possess. That is to say, you cannot give something as a gift that you have discarded like trash. You have to treasure your life in order to give it away.

Anne Lamott says she has learned to be militantly and maternally on her own side. Particularly if you didn’t have a good mother figure, be one, to yourself. It is about time you blessed the little heart of your inner child. “There, there, everything’s going to be okay. You are loved.” Somedays we must repeat those words to ourselves like a mantra.

Anne Lamott also wrote the following about learning to love a part of herself. She was traveling on a cruise ship, and she tells this story:

The aunties have put on weight since our last trip to the tropics, the aunties being the jiggly areas of my legs that show when I put on a swimsuit. I had fallen in love with them five or six years ago, the darling aunties, shyly yet bravely walking exposed along the beaches of Mexico. Used to having them hidden in the dark of long pants and capris and the indoors, I suddenly understood that they carried me through my days without complaint, strong and able, their only desire to accompany me, on beaches, in shorts, and to swim in tropical water. I vowed to include them from then on, to be as kind and grateful as possible. But that had been nearly fifteen pounds earlier.

I put on some shorts and announced to the aunties that we were going for a walk on the ship’s deck. They are so in love with me, as if I were a gentleman caller. Half the time I am hard on them, viewing them with contempt, covering them up, threatening to do something drastic—I’ll make them start jogging, that’s what I’ll do! Sometimes I catch myself being mean to them, and my heart softens, and I apologize, hang my head, and put lotion on them, as if laying on hands.

I went by the café and asked the aunties what they might like for a snack—bread pudding or fruit salad. They wanted half a sandwich, a lot of bread pudding, and one small whole-wheat bun. I think they would have ordered a bread beverage if they could.

I found a lounge chair and ate my pudding. Every so often, I looked up and smiled at people walking by. If Jesus was right, these are all my brothers and sisters. And they are so letting themselves go. This is not how Jesus would have seen them, but at first I could not help it—I saw an expanse of walruses, big wet bodies flopped down on towels, letting it all hang out. I drank my soda and put more lotion on the aunties. They loved it out there on the deck, watching the company onboard. I felt safe with the people around me now. This sense of safety suddenly made it clear to me that, looking at us, God saw not walruses but babies: radiant and befuddled, all these hearts at temporary rest. When you rest, you catch your breath, and it fills your lungs and holds you up, like water wings, like my father in the deep end of the rec center pool.[2]

When I read stories about people who’ve learned how to be comfortable in their own skin, I realize that the main reason I am so hard on other people (and thus paralyzed from really loving them) is because I am even harder on myself. I can’t accept my own flaws and quirks, and so I expend myself in an exhausting, unending game of comparison, always hunting for at least one person who I am clearly better than, and at least one thing about every single person that I can trump. But when I am gentler with myself, I begin to be gentler with others, less uptight, a bit more forgiving. When I am gentle with myself, I actually start to believe that God loves me, just as I am. When I stop being a drill sergeant on the inside, and start treating myself the way I want to be treated, start treating myself the way the Gospels suggest Jesus would treat me, I slowly start to see past the dire perspective I’ve had of myself all this time, and see myself through the divine eyes instead, as a child created in the image of God, full of life and beauty and wonder. And the people around me turn into children too, full of laughter and neediness, worthy of love.

Last week I was mad at Nate about something I usually get mad about, until I looked over at him, curled up on the couch, all six feet of him, and he looked so much like a little boy that I melted a little and felt compelled to bless his heart. It seemed to me, in that moment, at least, that starting a marriage is like two five-year-olds on the playground. When you get married, out pops your kindergarten self—that version of yourself that wears your need for attention on your sleeve. Your imperfections and quirks are on display—those embarrassing flaws you’d learned to manage so expertly suddenly resurface and you are desperate for this person you’ve married to love you anyway. Beginning our marriage has been like carrying a huge poster-board that reads, “Will you love me, please?” We are both carrying signs, but I rarely notice his because I am so busy adorning mine with glitter and rhinestones and swirls that I hope he will like. I am sticky in glue and desperate for approval. But last week I caught a glimpse of his poster-board when he was curled up at my feet. His poster is full of his favorite colors, not mine, decorated with his favorite zoo animals, not mine, but come to think of it, I finger-painted my own sign with the same self-absorption, uncomprehending that we are different people. But tonight I study his sign, and I can see his soul between the paint smears. He has penciled in the words, “Despite everything,” above “Will you love me, please?” I wholeheartedly whisper, “yes,” and for a couple of holy and sacred minutes, I do not even worry whether he has noticed my sign, the one I’ve spent ages on, the one he sometimes makes fun of, the way we all use mockery to feel better about our own creations.

Love, I think, is the miracle of looking up from your own poster, and by this brave act of self-acceptance, you actually begin to see your neighbor. Love is when the tunnel vision focused on your own needs is replaced by something bigger, like your eyes just woke up a little wider.

It is too simple, I think, to say that love is a choice, as if we could rule the most wild beast known to man with a mere effort of the will. As best I know, from my admittedly limited life experience, there are only segments of life in which we really love another human being, where we lay down our poster-boards, our vying for attention, our hungry insecurity, and are freed to love others genuinely. When those miracle moments occur, fueled by nothing less than the very love of Christ, we lean into them as long as they last and let them carry us into sacrificial acts we did not know were possible. The rest of the time, we make small decisions to be gentler with ourselves, and consequently, gentler with others. Little by little, we wrap our minds around the divine love, and little by little we actually feel wrapped up in its warm embrace. We don’t fret about our slow our progress is, because that would not be gentle. We don’t wallow in guilt or resentment if we can help from it, because that would not be gentle. We treat our lives like the treasures that they are, granting them a place of honor, because we will never be able to give our lives away if we’ve swept them under the rug in shame. We practice the extravagant love of God, first on ourselves and then on our neighbor. We are pushed to the outer fringes of love again and again by our mistakes and their mistakes, and that’s where we learn that what we thought must be the edge of love was really only the beginning. We were wading in the shallows all this time, afraid love didn’t go any deeper, but it turn out there’s a whole ocean of love, big enough to swallow up even death itself.

The writers of Scripture try one way and then another, desperate to get this Giant, Easter-sized Love past our thick skulls and down into who we are. So perk your ears and listen to their wisdom, free yourself up to be surprised at just how much you are loved.

Franciscan Retreat – May 11-12

What happens: Learn about St. Francis and his spiritual tradition, work on a Rule for your
life that will reflect Christian values and goals, share your own spiritual insights and learn
from others, participate in a monastic experience that will enrich the body, soul, and mind,
and enjoy fellowship with other Christians.
What to bring: Bible and writing material, comfortable clothes, work clothes if you choose
to do outdoor work, basic toiletries (air mattresses and bedding provided)

Retreat_Flyer

The Journey of Repentance (Living as Resurrection People)

Living as Resurrection People: The Journey of Repentance

Acts 3:12-19, Psalm 4, 1 John 3:1-7

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

Eastertide

April 22, 2012

Kyndall Renfro

At the beginning of Lent, I told you I was on a pilgrimage to rediscover the practice of confession because I was afraid it had gone missing. I confessed to you, there was a lack of confession in my life, and I am afraid there is a lack of confession in the church. That sermon was the beginning of a Lenten pilgrimage and now, here we are, on the other side of the Cross, celebrating the glories of Eastertide and an empty tomb, and our lectionary texts today are filled with talk of repentance.

While I was geared up and ready to talk about confessing and repenting during Lent, it seems a bit too sad for Eastertide, don’t you think? In the Acts chapter 3 passage, Peter’s sermon returns us to the pain and shame of the cross before we are ready. “It’s only been two weeks since Easter,” I want to protest, and Peter takes us right back to Good Friday, reminding us it was our voices shouting, “Crucify him.” Peters says this to the crowd, “You handed him over to be killed. You disowned him before Pilate. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you instead. You killed the author of life.”

Whew. I don’t know about you, but this is not the memory I want to go to on the third Sunday of Eastertide. It’s a harsh opener: “You killed the author of life.” This is not, by the way, how they teach you to start a sermon in seminary, but it is surprisingly effective for Peter, who sees five thousand people come to Christ. Of course, the point of Peter’s sermon is not the judgment, but the repentance of the people. He concludes by saying, “God raised him from the dead . . . and now, brothers and sisters, I know that you acted in ignorance. So repent and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that time of refreshing may come from the Lord.” 1 John 3 echoes, “But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins,” as if to say, the resurrection would be in vain if it didn’t in turn raise people up out of their sins and into a new way of life. Peter isn’t interested in whether the people feel bad for what happened at the crucifixion. What Peter wants is to see Easter brought to completion in their very hearts. His sermon is less about the sadness of Good Friday, and more about the joy of repentance. This can be hard for us to get our minds around since we’ve often been taught to associate repentance with sorrow.

Once upon a time, a priest was walking through the woods when he came upon a small green caterpillar. The caterpillar was weeping profusely, and was dressed in sackcloth and ashes. “My dear caterpillar,” said the priest, “whatever is the matter?”

“Oh Father, I want so badly to be a good and righteous caterpillar, but I have sinned.”

“I see,” said the priest gently. “Would you like me to hear your confession?”

“Yes, please,” sniffed the caterpillar, wiping the tears from his eyes and trying to be brave for the priest. “The thing is . . .” he choked back a sudden sob, “the thing is, I have failed to fly. I have not sprouted my wings like the other caterpillars. I have missed the very thing I was made for!”

“God loves you, my child,” answered the priest. “Your sins are forgiven. Go and sin no more. And between you and me, your “sin” isn’t so bad. You’ve still got time. Nothing’s been lost.”

“Really?” said the caterpillar. “Oh thank you, Father. I feel much better.” Immediately the little green caterpillar shed his sackcloth and ashes and inched his way happily along.

A few weeks later, the priest was walking the same trail and he kept his eyes peeled, looking for the cocoon of his little friend. He saw no cocoon, but he heard some sniffling. He got down on his knees, and there was his friend—hiding behind a leaf, again dressed in the sackcloth. “My dear caterpillar, whatever is the matter?”

“Oh, Father, I do want to be a righteous caterpillar, but I have sinned.”

“Shall I hear your confession?”

“Yes, please. The thing is . . . I have failed to sprout my wings.”

“Oh child, your sins are forgiven.”

“Thank you Father! I feel better now.” And Caterpillar crawled happily off.

A few weeks later, the priest was walking, and though he kept his eyes peeled, he had to really hunt as Caterpillar was hiding in shame beneath lots of brush.

“Oh Father, I have sinned!” he wailed.

“Shall I hear you confession?”

“Yes, please. The thing is . . . I have failed to sprout my wings!”

“Can I ask you something, Caterpillar?”

“Oh yes, Father, anything!”

“Have you actually tried to spin a cocoon yet?”

Caterpillar looked startled. “Well no. I haven’t gotten that far yet, but that is something to think on. Thanks Father! I feel better now. Good-bye.”

The next week, the priest took another path altogether as it seemed to him his services to the caterpillar were not really helping.

The Hebrew word for repent is shub, and shub means to turn around, thus repentance is about the direction you are headed, not how sorry you feel over your mistakes. For Peter, repenting isn’t about feeling sad that Jesus died. To repent is literally to change your mind about Jesus Christ. Peter says, “You acted in ignorance,” which is an invitation for the people to embrace new understanding. The Greek word for repentance is metanioa, which means a transformation of the mind. In our 1 John 3 passage, repentance is about accepting what you already are in Christ—a child of God—and trusting that one day you will be like Christ. And this knowledge, this hope, this changing your mind about yourself, is what enables you to start the process of purification.

Both shub and metanioa are quite different from the guilt-laden, sorrow-ridden, depressing notion of confession and repentance with which the caterpillar and most of us are all too familiar. In biblical terms repentance is a remembrance of God, and a remembrance of who we are in God, and neither of those memories are unpleasant thoughts. They are bright sparks of insight, designed to spur us back home. This whole business of treating confession like a mandate to wear sackcloth and ashes is silly. When you’re released from prison, you go buy a spiffy suit or a party dress. When the shackles fall off your feet, you dance, and when the blinders fall from your eyes, you blink and then you sparkle.

I am not saying that you never weep, that you shouldn’t cry. Sometimes you disappoint someone you love or you disappoint yourself, and you have to grieve. But your grief is not repentance. Repentance hasn’t happened yet. Confession is when you point and say, “Oh, that’s the way I meant to go,” and repentance is when you take the first step back in the right direction.

I’ve heard some preachers say that to repent is to turn around 180 degrees and go the other way, but I don’t think that is quite right. Rarely, if ever, in my life have I been walking in the opposite direction of Christ. But I am nearly always 30 degrees to the right of Christ or 20 degrees to the left. I don’t say that to make light of my sin, because even if you start out only five degrees to the right, if you keeping walking that angle, you’ll end up yards, eventually miles, to the right of Christ. No matter how slight you’re off, if you set your own path, you end up with a triangle where you had hoped for the straight line of discipleship.

Once I realize I’ve quit following Christ, and struck out on my own angle instead, repentance does not mean I instantaneously transport myself back onto the right trail, as if I could magically teleport to a new location on the journey. To repent means I angle back towards Christ, with the knowledge that all is forgiven, with the hope that I can make it back, with the trust that God will help me get there, with the patience to know that forging my way back will take time and effort and very small steps. But even still, I am moving forward, towards Christ and not away from him, and the direction I am going is all that has ever mattered—not the speed, not the apparent success, not how manicured of an appearance I can maintain as I hack my way through the brush. If I am growing more loving as I struggle my way, inch by inch, then I am indeed moving towards Christ. If I am a little less afraid, a little less selfish, a little more giving and forgiving, then I am indeed moving towards Christ.

To repent is neither to bemoan my failures nor to spin around in panic. To repent is to celebrate new understanding and gently correct. Life itself is a series of gentle corrections.

To repent is not a one time act. Repentance is a life-style of patient zig-zagging. Often we head off presumptuously, and somewhere along the way we realize that we’ve taken off at the wrong angle and completely lost sight of our trail guide, who is Christ. There are several possible reactions to this realization. 1) We can fall to our knees, cry our sorrow, and plead for the forgiveness that is already ours. Feeling a bit better after the shedding of tears, we then get up and plod on, right down the same angle we were walking before. This is not repentance. It is a desire to follow Christ, crippled by a shriveled imagination and a dried up sense of adventure. We have not the creativity or the audacity to envision a new trail that will lead us back to Christ. 2) We realize we are headed the wrong way, and in terror dart off in some new direction, desperate for change. But very quickly our new surroundings are even scarier than the old ones and we’ve no idea if we’re really headed anywhere worthwhile so we return to the comfort of the familiar trail. This is not repentance. It is short-lived enthusiasm, choked out by our need for the familiar and for instant transformation. 3) We realize we are headed the wrong way, and we rejoice with relief to see this bit of truth. We stop, we pause, we pray, we think. In the words of the Psalmist, we ponder on our beds and be silent. What we are really doing in the silence, of course, is looking for Christ. We spot him in the distance. He was waiting patiently all this time for us to look his way—all those days, years we were cutting our own angle. He waves, to let us know all is forgiven. And we say to ourselves with a sigh, “God, he’s a long ways off,” and then with a smile, “Here it goes again,” and then we take one step. Within minutes we are one step closer, which is a heck of a lot better than being one step farther away. A few steps later, we may veer to the right or veer to the left, so as soon as possible, we repeat the process: finding Christ, adjusting our steps. And that, my friends, is repentance. It is also called discipleship, faith, Christianity. It’s all we’ve got to work with, but if we can believe it, there’s hope enough for every last one of us.

We tend to think that repentance is what we do after we have rebelled, but I think just the opposite. Repentance is what we do after we’ve finally worn out the same old path that just isn’t working. The problem is rarely rebellion; most of us are too chicken to do any real rebelling. The problem is insistently repeating a harmful pattern. Repentance is realizing that the trail we’re on has been at the wrong angle all this time, and it is time to head off in a new direction. Thus repentance is rebellion put to good use. We dare to do things differently. We dare to try something new—in our marriage or in our parenting or in our work relationships. We dare to see things differently—concerning our environment, concerning the people we encounter, concerning our perceptions of our self. We believe a different voice than the depressing track repeating itself inside ours heads, telling us there’s no way out of the mess we’re in.

It is a real risk to repent, you know. You have to leave familiar territory and comfortable paths to blaze a new trail that might turn out to be harder than the one you’re currently on. You may know you are on the wrong path, but you choose to stay on it because what if you just exchange one wrong path for an even worse one? At least this path with its potholes and dangers is a familiar one, and you know how to walk it. You have to get in touch with your rebel’s heart if you’re going to repent, because taking a new path, when it might turn out to be just as crooked and frustrating as the last one, takes real spunk. You can see Christ up ahead, but you can never know for sure if that first step will take you where you want to go or if you’ll just end up sidetracked yet again, lost in unfamiliar territory.

But if you grow just a little more loving as you take those brave, belabored steps, then you know, yes, you are moving towards Christ, no matter how slowly. If you grow a little less afraid, a little less selfish, a little more giving and forgiving, then you are headed where you want to go, even if it’s hard, even if the way is clouded, even if you misstep here and there.

Discovering the right path can, at first, be joyous. Repentance is more disheartening in the long run, as you discover all the obstacles blocking your way back to Christ. But the struggle itself is part of the journey. A few weeks ago, I read this story:

“A silkworm was struggling out of the cocoon and an ignorant man saw it battling as if in pain, so he went and helped it get free, but very soon after it fluttered and died. The other silkworms that struggled out without help suffered, but they came out into full life and beauty, with wings made strong for flight by their battle for fresh existence.”*

My friends, may we continue our battle for fresh existence, ever angling back towards Christ. May God make us the sort of rebels that will dare to walk a different way. Amen.

The Forging of Unity (Living as Resurrection People)

Living as Resurrection People: The Forging of Unity

Acts 4:32-35, Psalm 133, 1 John 1:3, 6-7

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

Eastertide

April 15, 2012

Kyndall Renfro

Very few people these days have ever experienced church in the rosy, picturesque way it is described in Acts chapter 4: “They were of one heart and soul. God’s grace was powerfully at work among them. There was not a needy person among them.” Of course, the rest of Acts will paint a more realistic portrayal, complete with persecutions, church disputes, and everyday setbacks. But even still, shouldn’t the church of today live up to the ideal in Acts chapter 4 at least partway or some of the time?

Instead, it is more common for people go to church and experience burn-out or manipulation or bullying or judgment or bickering or just plain boredom, and as result it is becoming a trend in my generation to leave the church behind altogether. My peers aren’t necessarily losing faith or abandoning God, but they are exiting the church doors by the herds and most are not coming back. While spirituality remains in vogue, the church itself has been too big of a disappointment to stomach. These days God is easier to spot among the trees than he is to find beneath any steeples, and my generation isn’t afraid to say so out loud and head to the forest, without glancing back at the pews.

Eugene Peterson tells the story of being a young pastor leading a building campaign for his church. The campaign was energizing and effective . . . but after the building was completed, people stopped coming to church! An advisor told Peterson the church needed a new challenge, a new goal, something to achieve in order to keep people engaged. He told Peterson, “Start another building fund, even if you don’t intend to build a building.”[1]

Does that advise feel “off” to you? Tricking people to get involved in a project that isn’t going anywhere? Is the goal of the church to get people in the doors or to form people into real disciples of Jesus Christ? But then again, how do you form disciples if no one shows up?

An important question is where did people get the idea that they could be stay-at-home Christians, private Christians, closet Christians? Biblically-speaking, there is no such thing. As Eugene Peterson writes, “Whether we like it or not, the moment we become a Christian, we are at the same time a member of the Christian church . . . we become brothers and sisters in faith. No Christian is an only child . . .”[2]

And yet, Christians are showing up at the church to start with but then leaving, deeply wounded and afraid to show their face again. If not deeply wounded, at least genuinely disappointed and disillusioned. Can they be blamed for wanting to bail, for feeling they have no other choice but to pursue a healthier spirituality on their own?

We must admit the Church has done some ugly things—some of them outright horrendous, some of them more subtly harmful. People have been hurt, at times, even killed in the name of the Church, and for all the atrocities of the Church, we are both deeply sorry and unequivocally adamant that Jesus Christ himself is against all hatred, abuse, and exploitation.

That being said, we turn to the lesser abuses—the everyday frustrations, the grumpy attitudes, the gossiping tongues, the plain, sinful, sometimes dramatic, sometimes dull people who make up the church. The aggravating stuff with which of all us are probably all too familiar. Sometimes the normal, daily soap opera of church is enough to scare people away as it is.

As Peterson puts it, “the fact that we are family does not mean we are one big happy family.”[3] He says it’s like sibling rivalry, being in the church, like children, so full of their own needs that a brother or sister becomes a competitor.[4] The Psalms tell us it is joyful and pleasant when kindred live together in unity . . . but if you’ve been a part of the church or even been a part of a human family, you know that such pleasant unity is hard to come by. How did the church in Acts do it? Have one heart and one soul?

The rest of Acts will demonstrate that even this community was not without its problems. There was external pressure and internal conflict, unresolved questions and regular ole’ people. Their one and only “secret” ingredient was the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which they continued to proclaim all their days. It is not as if unity magically occurred because everything was in order or because just the right kind of people found each other. Unity happens in the middle of a mess, as people learn how to love another, share with one another, and put their trust in the resurrection reality that can make all things new. This doesn’t come easy, but as Peterson says, “If God is my Father, then this is my family.”[5] And all families take effort.

The people of God are going to sweat a bit, but most church buildings I’ve been in have the AC cranked high, disguising the fact this is about to get uncomfortable. We don’t want people to know it’s going to be hard, because then they might not stay. We want them to feel happy and pleased and comfortable, but I wonder if that’s as dishonest as starting a building campaign when you aren’t going to build anything at all.

Nate and I were confiding in a friend about a low point in our young marriage and he reminded us that while it’s a great thing when your marriage is happy, marriage is not meant to make you happy. Marriage is to make you holy, he said, and that hit our unhappy hearts like a dagger, but it hit like the truth too. There’s nothing like marriage to make you confront your dark side. You could very well nurse your darkness if you were alone, but marriage drags your crap out into light and asks you straight, “Are you going to keep feeding the mess inside of you forever or are you going to let that part die, so that you can live more fully?”

And while it is great when the church makes you happy, the church is not meant to make you happy. The church is meant to make you holy. There’s nothing like the church to make you confront your dark side. So there will be days where you are frustrated or discouraged, even angry, be it the universal Church, or your own local congregation. But you don’t give up, because this is the roadway to holiness. Even when everything is rubbing you the wrong way, don’t run off. It may be rubbing your sins right off.

This is probably harder for me to believe than it is for you to believe. It is a well-known fault of most pastors that we are addicted to trying to keep everyone happy, which is mostly impossible, which is why a good number of us end up burning out along the way. So maybe you could help me out? Come tell me when I must be doing something wrong because you are just so darn happy at Covenant. I need to loosen up and quit pleasing you so much. Remind me that on occasion the liturgy needs to make you uncomfortable, that if I don’t make sense in my sermon or we didn’t sing your favorite hymn, that’s actually what you need if the church is going to prod your growth. Every once in awhile, you need the church to shake you up a bit, because if everyone’s always pleased as peach, then something’s gone terribly wrong around here.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this in his classic work, Life Together: “The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. We must surely be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. Visionary dreaming makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself. 

Because God has bound us together in one body in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. And is not what has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace? Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds up together—the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.”[6]

When someone advised Eugene Peterson to start a building campaign in order to revitalize his church, Peterson did nothing instead. He slowed down and waited, and he said later, “By doing nothing, I think I was slowly being cured. I learned to live a life that was contemplative, not competitive.”[7]

I asked earlier where people got the idea you could be a stay-at-home Christian, and I think this is fueled by a renewed hunger for authenticity, a hunger so strong people are fed up with churches that are not sincere or true to the love of Christ, and that fire is a good thing and an important voice for the church to hear. But underneath the good desires seems to be a lack of willingness to weather through disappointment—which is ultimately a community-breaker, a family-breaker, a friendship-breaker. You all have chosen both authenticity and the bravery to weather disappointment, which is why you stick around here, and that is a beautiful thing.

Part of growing as a Christian or growing as a church or just growing as a person for that matter is learning to sit with our discontent. To stop being driven by the need for immediate satisfaction, to live with our unhappiness and anxiety and see what they have to teach us. Some of our discontent will turn out to be ill-founded and will surprisingly melt away when we least expect it. Some of our discontent will resolve itself because our patience will grant needed grace to sticky situations. Then again, some of our discontent will follow us around like a ghost, whispering in our ear, never letting us alone, but even these ghosts will become less important to us than the real people standing at our side, offering us their faltering but beautiful expressions of love.

The Psalmist says it is pleasant and good when kindred live together in unity, like oil running down the beard of Aaron. Which is a weird metaphor unless you know that oil signified the anointing of a priest. Thus, Peterson says, “Living together means seeing the oil flow over the head, down the face, through the beard, onto the shoulders of another—and when I see that I know that my brother, my sister, is my priest. When we see the other as God’s anointed, our relationships are profoundly affected.”[8] The Psalmist tells us this is the blessing the Lord wants for us, and he calls it “life evermore.” In other words, heaven itself is like a good party, where relationships are warm, and companionship is joyful, and priests are abundant.

But we’ve got to stay honest about our little piece of heaven here on earth, which we call Covenant Baptist Church. We’ve got to be honest that this family isn’t going to make it because we are all so alike or because our worship runs smoothly or because our building is beautiful. The only real unifying factor is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the power of that single story to change us and bind us together. We have to die a little to self—all of us—in order to rise up in love. We must accept that the person across the room so different from me is my priest, and God set it up so that we would need each other. We must face the death of our wish-dreams and our illusions of community for the real community of Christ to thrive.

This place won’t be the fellowship you want, but it will be the fellowship you need, if you stay put, if you see the oil running over the beard of your otherwise exasperating neighbor, if you keep the resurrection story tucked in your heart and water it like a seed that will sprout just when you thought it was dying, if you learn to share with others and to accept the gifts offered to you, if you relax your hold on your wishes and dreams and open your hands to receive grace just as it comes. Though there will be obstacles and frustrations a plenty, you’ll be tickled pink to look back and realize how good and how pleasant it was when kindred lived together in unity, like a party of laid-back priests, offering the sacraments of grace to one another, like a piece of heaven on earth, like a layer of dew in a dry place, like the very body of Christ filled with the life-giving power of the Spirit. Amen.

Resurrection Sunday

Sermon for Covenant

Mark 16:1-8

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

Resurrection Sunday

April 8, 2012

Kyndall Renfro

The messenger proclaims, “He has risen! He is not here!”

But in the Gospel of Mark the women run away and tell no one because they are afraid. I don’t know about you but I want these women to get excited, burst out in song, do a little jig, toss confetti, throw a party, something. For all I care they could even go home and gather eggs from the hens, but then dye them all the colors of Spring. They could even tell their children the eggs came from bunnies. I just want them to do something exciting, something out of the ordinary. You know? Celebrate!

But apparently, according to Mark, they don’t feel like celebrating. They feel like hiding. Like running away into some secluded spot where they can sort this thing out. What’s happened to their Savior, really? After the horrific events of the past few days their brains just cannot process one more shock. This is overload, overboard, and they don’t know what to do or what to say, and so they say nothing.

Now in Matthew, in Luke, and in John the women run to the disciples and share the news. In those three Gospels, the women are the very first human beings to proclaim the Good News. But for whatever reason, the book of Mark tells the story differently: “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.

In this sense, Mark is the most unsatisfying of all four resurrection accounts. The tomb is empty . . . and it stays a secret. But before we get too disappointed by Mark’s ending, let’s rewind and start at the beginning.

First, I want you to think back on a day when you had to wake up extra early. It was still dark when you pulled yourself out of bed, the world around you hushed in sleep. There is something almost surreal about being awake when the world is still sleeping, like you’ve entered a different realm. Quieter, darker, slower, calmer.

Now think back on a day after someone you loved died. It was almost surreal, too, wasn’t it? When you weren’t doubled over in grief, you were too shocked to believe it really, actually just happened. It was like you had entered a different realm. Darker for sure and eerily quiet because the voice of your loved one was gone forever. Maybe you called their voicemail just to interrupt the stillness, to remember the sound of their voice. The world all around you was still bustling away like normal, and that was so strange you couldn’t comprehend it. How everyone else could just keep on living like the world hadn’t been irrevocably and definitely altered. How everyone else could walk, and work, and breathe as if there wasn’t now a huge hole in the universe, a suffocating absence stealing your oxygen by the second. It is like entering a different realm, when someone dies.

The women in the Gospel woke quite early, and it was not only dark outside, it was dark in their very souls. It had been dark since Friday, at noon, when the Scriptures report that the light of the sun failed and the sky went black and Jesus called out into the gathering darkness, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” The Light of Jesus was snuffed out, and if the sun came back out after that, the women hadn’t noticed. It was all darkness to them.

On this particular morning, they worked silently side by side in the morning darkness, gathering their spices. It didn’t quite seem real, and I suppose that is how they kept moving, how they kept from breaking down. Most of men had fled in fear, so the women set out for the tomb alone, unguarded and unappreciated. Perhaps they should have been frightened, but they had each other, and that was a comfort. They knew a love stronger than death, and that gave them courage. Like mothers, they had an innate sense of devotion and nurturing, so they cared for their Lord, though he was dead. Like lovers, they had a passion that defied death, and so they would not abandon him, even now.

Each woman was still hovering over the cliff of her grief—it was just now the third day, and that wasn’t enough time to dive in. They were still just peaking over the edge, wondering what it would feel like when they fell in and crashed against the jagged rocks of their pain and disappointment, what it would be like when the huge wave of anguish finally washed over their battered selves and swallowed them up. But for now they remained poised in their state of shock, waiting for the reality of heartache to hit them full force.

It was a bit of a relief, really, to head to the tomb. It gave them something to do, it broke them out of the paralysis of shock. One woman wondered to herself if seeing the body again would bring finality and closure—if she would calmly dress the body with dignity or if she would barely be able to bring herself to face the lifeless body, the man in whom she’d put all her hope.

Another woman asked aloud, “Who will roll away the stone?” It was the first word anyone had said all morning, and the practicality of the question posed a nice distraction from the deeper emotions. They were talking it over, and they didn’t notice the light of the son, just beginning to peak out over the horizon.

The women were still debating their options when they looked up and found their dilemma already resolved. The stone was been rolled away. Was it Peter? Had it been John? Did one of them work up enough bravery to come out of hiding? Did a disciple wake early to get the tomb ready for the women?

Whoever did it, the women were grateful, and they walked on in, unsuspecting. Most of us walk through life unsuspecting too. We come across something odd, and our minds create an explanation where there is none. We are not prepared to be bowled over by miracle, to discover that God is at work in the world after all, to learn that everything can change in the blink of an eye.

So I think we can relate to these women that what they saw when they walked into the tomb was so disorienting they could hardly breathe, much less think. Jesus’ body wasn’t there. A young man was there, but he was very much alive, and they had never seen him before. “Don’t be alarmed,” he smiled.

They stared warily back at him, and tried to revive their lungs and repel the fog from their brains so they could figure out what was going on.

“He has risen. He is not here. Look! Over there, the place where they laid him—empty! So go, tell his disciples and Peter. He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”

And that was the most surreal moment of them all. There was dead silence and no one dared draw a breath. Then Salome noticed that her legs were quivering, like she might fall right over, and Mary was trembling from head to foot. Their bodies were reacting faster than their minds could catch up, and all the confusion gave them a great fright, and they shuffled backwards out of the tomb very slowly until their feet hit the wet grass, and then it became a dead sprint, and they ran and they ran and they didn’t say a word . . .

Every time God turns out to be even bigger than your ideas about God, and your ideas of God come crashing down about you like someone’s taken a baseball bat to your shrine of idols, you are stunned speechless. You had thought you were faithful, you had thought you had this figured out, you had thought . . . but everything you thought you knew about the world is suddenly being questioned, and you’d rather hide than face it. The women’s first instinct was to run, and the Gospel of Mark doesn’t give us a clue what these women did with themselves after the initial shock.

Of course, the other three Gospels have satisfying reports of the women rushing to the disciples and sharing the news. It is not unreasonable to assume that even in Mark, the women eventually do tell someone, though it isn’t recorded. I mean, presumably they told someone, because how else did the author of Mark get his story about them? Furthermore, we can suppose from their courage in sticking with Jesus all the way to his death and from their bravery in returning to the tomb in the first place, these women will find their courage once again.

But there must be a reason Mark ends so abruptly. In Greek, verse 8 actually ends midsentence. Later in Christian history, other Christians will insert verses 9-20 to conclude the Gospel and finish the story for us. Your own Bible probably explains this in a footnote, or vv.9-20 may appear in italics or in brackets, to indicate the last half of the chapter didn’t appear in the original manuscripts. It was added later, presumably because later Christians figured we all needed better closure.

But why wasn’t there closure in the first place?? Why does the Gospel of Mark end midsentence in its original manuscript?

It reminds me of those Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books that I read as a kid. Instead of providing one ending, there were multiple alternatives, and as the reader, you got to pick which ending you wanted. Maybe Mark wants us to understand that the story is left in our own hands. God invades a dying, hostile world with life and with love, but then we are left with a bit of choice as to what we will do with the story, and while it scares me to know that God trusts us enough to give us such a responsibility, it inspires me too.

You and I are left with a charge—to carry Easter around in our hearts, and to let Christ’s light shine forth from our very souls. Which all sounds well and good when we are sitting politely dressed in our Easter best, filling ourselves up on beautiful music and sugar-packed candy. It is harder to believe in Easter on Monday morning. It is much more of a challenge to carry hope in your heart when your body is failing you—or when your bills are piled high or when your kid is sick or when your relationships are strained.

But even for the women in the Gospel, the most faithful followers of Christ, who loved him even through death—even for them, Easter was a terror they fled before it was a song they sung. It was too hard to believe, it was too strange to understand, it was too different to embrace. It was all too big for them in the beginning, and I suspect that even after they overcame their initial fears, there were days they still had their doubts. I mean, they were banking on the words of a stranger—the young man in white who caught them by surprise. But of course, for the rest of Christian history, we would all be banking on the witness of those before us, trusting the community to tell us the truth, believing them when they say “God is alive” even when we can’t see Him. That is big risk, and at times we will run for our lives. But then we will return, for our lives, because Christ will be beckoning us home, and offering us the life. Our friends will remind us, “He is risen, He lives!” We will trust them. We will trust that we too can rise up from the graveyards of our brokenness. Instead of meandering through our dark places unsuspecting, we will open our eyes wide and look for signs of resurrection, even in the midst of grief and pain and loss.

My friends, will the story end here, as it did in Mark, or will it live on, in you? May Easter be like an egg in your heart—it will crack open, and you will jump, but then it will spill over and its joy will run over and through you, and you will be dripping in its goo, unable to remove the cling, but you will be laughing and dancing, celebrating like a child, delighted that this mess of a miracle made its way to you. You’ll lose a bit of dignity, but you’ll gain a lot of joy, and Hope will show you where to go from here. Amen.

Palm Sunday

A Sermon for Covenant

Mark 11:1-11

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

Palm Sunday

April 1, 2012

Kyndall Renfro

The Triumphal Entry seems so out of character for Jesus that I find myself struggling to understand its place in the Gospel. We’ve traversed quite a bit of the book of Mark this year, and at every turn Jesus seems to be shushing people, warning them not to spread the news that he is Messiah. “See that you tell no one” is a Markan refrain, like a praise chorus that keeps on repeating itself, only it is a resounding “shhh” rather than an alleluia. Maybe the Hosanna of today’s text is a big relief after all that silence, and that is why we get excited about Palm Sunday. Finally, we get to make some noise. Finally, the secret’s out. Jesus is King, and we can shout it. Finally.

But after the street dust has settled and the palm leaves have been trampled and the boisterous singing has softened, we are left wondering what made Jesus change his tune? I mean, the people do not burst forth in jubilation like characters in a musical, catching Jesus by surprise. The crowd didn’t stage a flash mob in defiance of Jesus’ demand for silence; Jesus himself does all the staging. If you read the story, you get the sense that Jesus encouraged the praise by setting it all up just so. He arranges for the donkey, he plans it out meticulously, he rides in, he accepts the glory. But why? What happened to keeping it quiet, staying beneath the radar, and maintaining a low profile?

Not only does Jesus suddenly seem to change his strategy, it is odder still that he chose this moment to do so. He is entering Jerusalem, which is the place of his imminent death. He is not just approaching the holy city, he is approaching his torturous demise—the stark loneliness of his trial, the forsakenness on the cross, the abandonment of his followers. On the cusp of so much pain, why celebrate?

And to make it lonelier still, the giddy people frolicking about him are none the wiser. They dance and they shout, but they think they are getting a king who will overrun their oppressor and grant them their freedom, and while Jesus indeed is King, he will not at all fit the mold they expect or desire. They do not expect him to suffer silently and die.

So why? Why does Jesus seemingly encourage all this frivolity and merriment on his account?

Scholar Margaret Farley asks the question, “is Jesus’ triumphant entry part of a journey marked by deeper and deeper letting go of all things except the will of God?”*

It was not just Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem that was significant; it was the whole journey that brought him here. Sometimes we think the only time Jesus had to wrestle with his fate was in the Garden of Gethsemane, or perhaps once early on in the wilderness those 40 days with Satan. But I suspect the surrender was daily. Jesus inched his way to Jerusalem, each step a sacrifice. He kept making the right choice time and again, but that doesn’t mean the choosing came easy. So making it to Jerusalem was triumphant, in its own way. Jesus entered Jerusalem, knowing full well what that would mean, and that obedience alone was a victory of sorts. Yes, there was much left to accomplish. Much left to face. But he’d made it this far, which seemed to indicate he could make it to the very end.

Jesus entered Jerusalem as a dusty pilgrim. It had been a long road, and though arrival meant more hardship and greater suffering, even still, his rugged faithfulness thus far was worth celebrating.

I find the image of Jesus journeying, laboring, step by step to the holy land to be a helpful one for us pilgrims. We are all on a long journey of faith, one that requires patience with the road and patience with ourselves. It becomes suitable to celebrate tiny accomplishments and miniscule blessings, because when you’re on the road with Jesus you seldom feast luxuriously, but you often find manna right when you thought you would starve. When you journey with Jesus, you make unthinkable sacrifices and you love people wastefully and you throw parties at unexpected occasions, and that’s just the way the pilgrimage of faith unfolds.

Sometimes people talk about faith like it is something that happens is your head, as if Christianity is a checklist of ideas, and you either agree or don’t agree, but your mental assent is all that matters. But of course, what Jesus actually required was to follow him, and for those first disciples, this meant putting one foot in front of the other, step by step, wherever he led, all the way to Jerusalem, Golgotha, and beyond. There were lots of tears and lots of laughter, skinned knees and soiled sandals, but at the end of it all, they wouldn’t have traded the trip for all the gold in the world.

Faith is a journey, and it helps to see that even Jesus had to travel as a pilgrim. Sometimes we forget though, because our religious experiences are often confined to sitting on a pew, and thinking in our minds about what is being said. There is very little in our practice that forces us out of seats and onto the road, very little to help get what we believe conceptually down into our bones and into our very being and moving and living.

We do have a few things around here to help. At Covenant, we have the benefit of our paths, where we can pray and walk at the same time, and that helps, at least a little, to catch our living up with our believing (and visa versa) and to connect our bodies to our spirits.

Just yesterday, a group of us gathered at the prayer path together, and laid out the Stations of the Cross. The Stations are a pilgrimage of sorts, albeit a localized and brief one, and the idea is that if you walk with Jesus to the cross via the Stations, you’ll be more inclined to walk with Jesus wherever he leads in your regular life. You enter the Passion story, and as a result, the story gets inside of you and comes to life.

The first time I ever walked the Stations of the Cross, I was walking along, praying and reflecting at each part of the Passion Narrative, and suddenly the story became real in a whole new way. I remember looking at a picture of the crown of thorns, and all the sudden I felt the reality of Jesus’ death in my gut. There was just something about moving bodily from place to place in the narrative that made the story grow bigger than something I just carry around in my head, and it became a world I could walk around in, a tangible tale with the power to change me, inside and out. In that moment, Jesus became a little more real to me. Like a bit of incarnation.

Last week I made my box for our Stations of the Cross. I chose Station 6, which the part of the story where Jesus is Scourged and Crowned with thorns. So I fashioned a mini-crown of thorns from strands of thorns I found in the grass at the park near our house. It was delicate work, twisting together thorns without drawing blood. I pricked myself, and suddenly remembered this was more than an art project. Someone somewhere that fateful day fashioned a crown made of thorns with the intention of placing it on the head of the King of Jews. And in that moment too, Jesus became a little more real to me. Like a bit of incarnation.

Sometimes it is not until we see with our very own eyes or feel it with our fingers or hear with our ears or simply get up and walk on our own two legs that a story becomes real. Fortunately, we have practices to help faith travel from our heads into our being, our moving, our living.  But, we could sit on a pew Sunday after Sunday and never really get what Jesus is calling us into, never comprehend the story, never enter the story as an intentionally contributing character.

I think of those palm wavers the day Jesus entered Jerusalem, and truth be told, they had little to no idea what it really meant to hail this man as King. In a few short days they would be shell-shocked to see their future King arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. Some of the feet running to greet him would soon be running away, and some of the voices now crying, “Hosanna” would soon cry “Crucify Him.” But even those who didn’t fall away would still be dazed and disappointed, shocked and hurt. Their valiant defender won’t even fight back—he won’t raise a fist or draw a sword, and what kind of King won’t fight?

But profound disappointment is just what we’ve come to expect as the worshippers of a God who exceeds our imagination. We keep praising and singing, keep calling, Hosanna, save us! Not because this is a God who is what we think is, who fits inside our box, and who carries out our whims. We praise him because he is holy and he is good and we fully expect him to catch us by surprise again and again and again. We pray that when our understanding of who he is and why he is here gets radically shattered all over, we will find the courage to let our idolatrous perceptions fall by the wayside. We hope to let him ride into our lives as he is, that we might follow him wherever he goes.

We are a fickle band of worshippers, you and I. We sing our praises and then we cower in fear—we’re never quite sure if we love God or if we love our idea of God, somedays we are ready to follow him even if we die and somedays we are ready to crucify him. We are fickle and feeble and faltering, and that is just how God accepts us. He shows up amidst our clumsy worship and halted confessions. Our understanding will morph again and again. Each time we will be amazed, embarrassed, afraid, confused to discover that God differs from our fantasies about him, but God just smiles with each new discovery, and receives our latest expression of worship the way a parent receives a drawing from a child, and he puts it up on his refrigerator, side-by-side with the previous expression, and he is equally delighted by them both.

So may you be patient with the road and patient with yourself. May you color as vibrantly as you can, even if you can’t stay inside the lines. Amen.

Holy Week at Covenant

Wednesday

• Community Meal @ 6:30
• Vesper Prayers @ 7:00

Friday

• Community Stations of the Cross Walk  @ 6:15
• Good Friday Service @ 7:00

Sunday

• Easter Brunch @ 9:15
• Easter Worship @ 10:30
• Children’s Egg Hunt @ 12:00

Fifth Sunday of Lent

*Unfortunately, due to a recording glitch, no audio of this week’s sermon is available. The manuscript is below. 

A Sermon for Covenant

John 12:23-28

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

March 25, 2012

Kyndall Renfro

Unless you die, you will not live. If you love your life, you will lose it. But if you hate your life, you get to keep it, which begs the question, why do you want to keep something you hate?

If you ask me, Jesus is shooting himself in the foot here. No one is going to buy into this flip-flopped philosophy where you lose what you love and gain what you hate. But that’s just the thing about Jesus—he’s not a bit perturbed if no one buys, because he isn’t selling. The Gospel isn’t a product up for purchase, and that frees Jesus from having to sprinkle it with glitter so it catches your attention. He just says it like it is, so that nothing short of the Spirit of God can move you towards it.

Nobody in their right mind buys into an outlook like this one. In the first place, it doesn’t make sense. In the second place, it doesn’t sound like a bit of fun. And while Jesus’ disciples were surely squirming uncomfortably at the sound of Jesus’ words, I reckon that what he said is even stranger for us 21^st century Americans.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed the patch of dying cactus by the entrance to our labyrinth—white and gray and withering—but after the recent rains, there are now all sorts of other plant life pushing up through the rot—death being transformed to life right at our feet. But for the most part, this type of natural renewal stays in the peripheral for us modern folk, such that it is not only a challenge to relate to Jesus’ sayings about death; it is near impossible to relate to a kernel of wheat at all. What do we know of planting and harvesting? Jesus’ analogy isn’t helpful for people who buy their bread and veggies at HEB.

In our automobiles and air-conditioned buildings, we stay pretty far removed from nature’s cycle of life. We have buildings to shield us from the seasons. We have grocery stores to cushion us from agriculture. There are conveniences galore to absorb the shock of real life and hard labor, so we don’t have to feel things so acutely as our ancestors. We have machines and medications to artificially prolong life. And even in the face of death, we have gobs of entertainment to distract us from grief and make us feel invincible all over again.

What if all this self-imposed distance from pain and death cuts us off from knowing resurrection? What if we’ve blocked our view of regeneration? My friend Brett visited a primitive village in Southeast Asia where the native people don’t have trashcans, which is to say, they don’t have trash. At all. No waste. We would call that uncivilized—no technology, no gadgets, no appliances, no stuff. But no garbage either. That means nothing gets dumped forever. Nothing is discarded. Even dead bodies, I suppose, return to the ground and nourish it. Every single thing contributing to the cycle of life, nourishing the world even as it dies. Nothing pollutes life; everything feeds life.

Such a way of life is so entirely foreign to ours.  Resurrection has become scarce in modernity. We’ve nearly obliterated it from our line of vision. Jesus’ words about life coming out of death make little sense to us in our pell-mell, fast-food, factory-run world where we no longer plant our own seed and patiently watch for the life that slowly emerges from death. Ours is a world where we throw out our trash rather than reuse it; where we hide things in the attic rather than give them a second life. I am not saying our modern conveniences are evil, but I am suggesting they have stunted our capacity for imagining and believing in the power of resurrection. Sometimes I wonder if we do so much shopping in this country because our imaginations have been dulled—we’ve lost the capacity to create something new out of something old. So we throw out the old and rake in the new, and the overflow in our garbage cans and storage units wail in protest that our actual lives are, in fact, empty.

Resistance to death is, in part, due to a fear of time itself. If you are anything like me, time is often a tyrant that rules me and squeezes me dry, demanding my servitude and punctuality, wearing me thin. Of course we’ve nearly solved the problem of time. We have artificial light to prevent the coming of night, and caffeine to prolong the onset of sleep. All we lack is a machine that could delay the arrival of Monday morning, and we’d be set.

But if the sun never seems to set because the lamp is on, then we won’t notice the sunrise either, and once again, we have obscured our vision. Nature has its ways of reminding us that night brings morning, that winter turns to spring, that death results in rebirth. But I bought a lamp, an alarm clock, an iphone, and a bag of coffee so I am well on my way to defying the constructs of Time. I can beat this thing, I just know it. Unless, of course, Time wasn’t meant to be a problem to conquer but a gift to unwrap, surrendering myself to a Rhythm wiser than I.

Macrina Wiederkehr explains, “The ancients had a different relationship with time than most of us have. Time was not an enemy with which to do battle. For the elders of our historic past, time was more of a loving companion . . .They didn’t spend their lives trying to look eternally youthful. There was no such thing as anti-aging cream . . . dying was a celebration of life.”[1]

There are benefits to modern advances, to be sure, but there is also a dark side. We’ve little vision left for resurrection, and Jesus’ challenge to fall into the ground and die like a seed is a tall order for withered imaginations like ours.

When Jesus says we must hate “life in this world,” I think he is referring to what Charles Foster calls “the complex raft of support mechanisms we wrongly call our lives and think we need.”[2] We have schedules and planners that define us; gadgets, toys, and possessions that own us. There are the coping strategies behind which we hide from the truth about ourselves. There are the vanities and the violences we can’t seem to live without. None of these things are the “life” we gain if we follow Jesus. It will feel like death, pulling ourselves away from our treasures and crutches, but the end result is resurrection.

Easier said than done. We can’t just quit our jobs and walk away from all that is urgent. But we can die, bit by bit, day by day and find more of life along the way. Don’t ask me to explain it. I hardly understand it, but I trust it to be true. The only hope we have is that it worked for Jesus.

There is an age-old wisdom in Jesus words, but more than that, this is his testimony. Jesus is one who died like a kernel of wheat, and out of whom shot forth many seeds of righteousness. The one who gave up his life in order to gain life for himself and for the world. The one who was rejected by many but glorified by the Father.

The mystics tell us that we must be prepared to die if we want to live well. Someone once said, “It’s too bad dying is the last thing we do, because it could teach us so much about life.”[3] The poets tell us there is an art to dying; “we are dying to live,” said one, “all things are passing, moment by moment, birth to death. Take off that cloak of fear, the divine strength you seek is here.”[4] The Rule of St. Benedict instructs monks to keep death daily before their eyes. D.H. Lawrence wrote, “And if tonight my soul may find her peace, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.”

But what about us normal folks who still fear death and suffer grief and are not capable of producing poetry as a way to age gracefully? Is this talk of preparing to die something for the artists and the mystics, but not for us? If it all sounds too morbid, if it makes you queasy, you are not alone. Jesus himself admits to a troubled soul when facing his death, and he says, the logical thing would be to beg for deliverance, to ask God to save him from this hour. But he defies the logical response to death, and instead faces it with willingness, with clarity, with bravery. Death is an enemy, yet it is the gateway to life. If the mystics learned this about death from anybody, they learned it from Jesus.

It is not that death can be magically transformed into something cheery and rosy, warm and bright. Death is as scary and ugly and painful and disorienting as ever, but we recognize that avoidance does nothing to help us to gain life. All the constructs we erect to pad ourselves from harm only insulate us from life, and Jesus says we are stone cold dead inside our beautifully maintained shells. The only way to find life is to stare death right in the face, and tell it straight, “Death, you are ugly, but you cannot obliterate beauty. You are strong, but you have no power. You bring pain, but you can’t eliminate joy. You are only a shadow, and the Light is bigger than you are. You will come one day, and I will surrender peacefully, but even still, you will not have the final word. I accept you, and that only makes Life all the sweeter.”

As a Wise One once prayed, Lord, “Robe me with wisdom. Enable me to be at home with impermanence. Teach me the dance of surrender. O make of me a great letting go. May the sacred emptiness of my life help others to know fullness. May I never fear a death that brings me life. Let me rejoice in the harvest of each dying day.”[5]

Fourth Sunday of Lent

A Sermon for Covenant

John 3:1-21

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

March 18, 2012

Kyndall Renfro

This text isn’t an easy nut to crack. The longer Jesus talks, the more confused Nicodemus feels. The more confused Nicodemus feels, the longer Jesus talks.  Honestly, this wobbly dialogue is a familiar pattern in the Gospel of John.

Jesus is always talking to someone, and the someones are often confused by his talking—be it the woman at the well, the disciples, the Pharisees. Nicodemus, however, is the guinea pig of John’s Gospel—the first one to approach Jesus and to hear those fateful words, “Very truly, I tell you . . .” followed by some strange sayings. Whatever Nicodemus was expecting. . . what he got was probably a surprise. But let’s not get ahead of the story just yet . . .

First off, can you imagine, Nicodemus—Pharisee, strict follower of the Law, a guy who has probably never done a rebellious thing in his life—sneaking off in the middle of the night to visit Jesus? He knows there are some in his rank who are suspicious of Jesus and some who downright fear Jesus is a threat to Judaism. But Nicodemus has a theory that this wonder-worker is from God. In fact, he must meet this Jesus for himself. Face to face. Man to man. He must go, not as an authority to question Jesus but as a true seeker. Of course, the other religious leaders would hardly agree with Nicodemus’ approach, so he decides to go secretly, quietly, cloaked by the cover of night. He sneaks through the city in the dark, trying not to be seen. “Good grief, I’m not committing a crime,” he whispers to his pounding heart, trying to no avail to reason with his fears. He practices his opening lines to distract himself from his growing anxiety.

When he is finally in front of Jesus, he delivers his lines without a hitch, “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.” To say this feels good, feels right. Nicodemus has been thinking and praying in turmoil about Jesus’ identity for weeks now, but as the confession exits his troubled mind, past his lips, and out into the open, he knows he has arrived at his conclusion. He half-expects to see a look of pleasant surprise in Jesus’ eye, maybe even a glint of pride.

Instead, he glances into Jesus’ eyes and detects sadness, and the reply is solemn: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God, without being born again.”

Nicodemus hadn’t really given much thought to what Jesus would say back, but somehow this feels all wrong. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t even fit.

And this is the start of a messy dialogue in which Nicodemus never really gets answers, and Jesus, frankly, never makes a whole lot of sense. It begins to feel like a classroom with a teacher who is too smart for his own good. The perplexed pupil struggles to understand. The clever teacher thinks of just the analogy, but the analogy is equally complex, well over the pupil’s head. The longer the teacher talks, the more lost the pupil feels.

The bottom line, as far as I can tell, is that Jesus wants to communicate that knowledge about Jesus isn’t enough. Knowledge alone will not cut it, and I imagine that is why Jesus’ answer is so mysterious. If Jesus had explained things all straightforward and simple like, Nicodemus might have been tempted to think Jesus was just offering a bit of information—one more line for Nicodemus to add to his confession of faith, and then he’d have it.

But instead of explaining things, Jesus requires something so extraordinary that is seems literally impossible, entirely incomprehensible: to be born of the water and the Spirit, to be born again, to be born from above. Why, it is almost as if Jesus is inviting Nicodemus into an entirely different life, where the language is strange to your ears and the wind in your face is the very Spirit of God and everything is as new as when you emerged from your mother’s womb and the sheer mystery of utter newness is frightening. Nicodemus had come for a bit of understanding from the up and rising new Teacher—he hadn’t planned to enter a whole new world fraught with startling discoveries and upside-down logic.

“How can this be????” he stutters. This is the second time he has asked, and you can hear the frustration and bewilderment mounting in his voice.

“You are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?” Jesus shakes Nicodemus’ self-confidence in his position to the core.

Of course, Nicodemus doesn’t know it, but he is about to hear first-hand what will become perhaps Jesus’ most famous words—the line about how God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life . . . but, Jesus adds, “those who do not believe stand condemned.” And here is the kicker, “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people have loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.”

Perhaps “people who love darkness” is only a general term Jesus uses for those who resist him. It seems more likely that Jesus is also referring specifically to Nicodemus’ own preference for darkness. Jesus noticed to the way Nicodemus snuck in to see him under the cover of night. Not only does Jesus suspect that Nicodemus fails to get it, Jesus thinks his arrival by night is proof. Nicodemus is curious about the Light, but he still prefers the dark.

Notice that nowhere in the story does Nicodemus repent. Nowhere does it say Nicodemus became a disciple. Nowhere does it say that Nicodemus dropped his baggage, abandoned his status, left his fears behind him, and followed Jesus. We are left to assume that he skulked right back home, heavy beneath the weight of Jesus’ words, but probably grateful for the cover of darkness to hide his shame.

I can relate to Nicodemus’ love for the cover of darkness. I too, am equally intrigued by Jesus. I find him engaging, I want to know more, I think he is obviously from God, someone I ought to know. But I would sort of prefer to hide my confession from the crowds. It is not Jesus who embarrasses me. It is some of the people who claim to love him too. There are those who are terribly misguided about what Jesus is actually like and those who are just downright frauds, and I don’t really want to associated with a one of them. Don’t get me wrong. If it were only Jesus and Jesus’ true followers that I would be associated with, I could handle the scandal. I could befriend Mary, the pregnant virgin, John the Baptist, the locust-eating desert-dweller, Mary-Magdalene who’d been healed of seven demons, Zacchaeus, who robbed the people but then gave it all back fourfold. If I befriend them, and people think I’m crazy, so be it. I can swallow my pride, knowing in my heart I’ve befriended some true disciples.

But then there’s everybody else—the fakes, the real kooks, the con-artists, the religious bigots, the politicians, the hate-mongers, the money-snatchers, the misogynists, the militant fundamentalists. I don’t know which group gets under your skin—if it’s the overly-emotional sort or the intellectually snobbish type, if it’s the Republicans or the Democrats or those truly outlandish Christians who object to voting altogether. There is some “Christian” group with whom we would like to avoid association.

It is not that we cannot strive for a distinctive faith that stands out from the general crowd of Jesus-fans, but saying that no matter how much we want to be entirely separate from the masses of supposed devotees and establish ourselves as the irrefutably genuine ones, we can’t. This is the mess we find ourselves in, and it is just the kind of mess that Jesus graciously wades through day in and day out. He walks among this whole motley swarm of confused, half-hearted, messed-up, wanna-be disciples, and to every last one of us, Jesus keeps offering grace and extending the invitation, “Come, follow me, step into the light.”

Personally, this drives me nuts. I want Jesus to give up on the frauds, at the very least. Also, I wish he’d abandon the hateful types altogether and perhaps send a blinding revelation to the uninformed type, something they couldn’t possibly miss or misunderstand. When it comes to faith, I want in, I really do, but I want them out. I don’t want us to share the same title of Christ-follower when I feel their lifestyle, their philosophy, and frankly, their status before God is so different from mine. But Jesus says I must step out into the light and throw myself in with the worst of ‘em, and I don’t like that. I’d rather skulk back into the night and nurse my faith in private. Of course, when I am my most honest, I know that there is always a bit of fraud, a bit of hate, a bit of ignorance inside me too . . . (but surely not on that scale. Surely not.)

The Jewish situation, of course, was quite different from our current American one, but still, I find Nicodemus to be a kindred spirit to my elitism. Nicodemus just cannot bear that he must emerge fully into the light. Leave the cover of darkness and thus risk his status, his position, his power. He wasn’t willing to throw himself in with the whole lot of uneducated sinners and so he sneaks back off into the cover of the night, not willing, not believing—at least, not believing enough to enter a second birth from above. Nicodemus passes up the chance for new life and heads back home, where people still respect him. However, the story doesn’t end here.

This isn’t the last that we hear of Nicodemus. He shows up twice more in the Gospel of John.

In chapter 7, the Pharisees send the temple guards to arrest Jesus, but the guards return dazed and empty-handed, saying of Jesus, “No one ever spoke the way this man does.”

“You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retort in righteous anger. “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”

Nicodemus is in the room. He hears his peers claim with confidence that not a one of them have believed Jesus. He hears the way they mock the ignorant crowd and call them cursed. His colleagues have drawn a line in the sand, but Nicodemus isn’t sure he wants to be on their side anymore, even if the other side is an uneducated mob. He ventures a defense, albeit a weak one, of the man Jesus, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?” Of course, the rest of the room doesn’t know it, but Nicodemus has been to his own private hearing, and though he walked away, he apparently didn’t walk away with a sense of Jesus’ guilt. In fact, his own guilt has been weighing on him since that night, and perhaps it was there among his peers that he starts to feel fed up with his darkness and his hiding.

But we don’t hear about Nicodemus again until the very end of the Gospel. Jesus has just breathed his last. He hangs lifeless from a cross. The religious leaders have won. The mobs have been silenced and scattered. Even the disciples are huddled behind locked doors for fear of the Jewish leaders.

And who do you suppose shows up to care for the beaten, bloody, lifeless body? Joseph of Arimathea, who had been a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. And Nicodemus, who also believed in secret and who we thought never really became a disciple at all. The two scaredy-cats, who loved the secrecy of darkness, are the ones who come forward at the hour of greatest danger to do something for Jesus. Jesus, who is not even alive to thank them, reward them, bless them, or affirm their courage. It is not the people who loudly confessed their discipleship that show up here. Not the people who waved the palm branches and cried Hosanna. Besides for the women, it is just these two men who show up—two men who had been hiding all this time.

That means there is profound hope for the cowardly, for the uncertain, and for the hesitant.

Perhaps it was not until Jesus was raised up on the cross that Nicodemus finally fully believed, finally saw the Kingdom of God. In other words, respectable Nicodemus was born again, from above. Precisely at the moment in the story where things were as bleak and as incomprehensible as possible, Nicodemus finds his courage and enters the light. Most everyone thought the light had just been snuffed out, but Nicodemus didn’t care what they thought or worry about what they would do, and the new sensation of not-caring filled him with light during the world’s darkest hour.

When Nicodemus first paid Jesus a visit, Jesus had made the world sound pretty black and white: there is light and there is dark, there is condemnation and there is salvation, there is belief and there is unbelief, there is evil and there is truth. But Nicodemus walked away a mixed jumble of all those things, like a big mass of gray, indecisive and unclear, disbelieving his own belief. I don’t know if Jesus knew, right at that moment, that it would be Nicodemus who buried him, but I think Jesus knew Nicodemus would be back, that the darkness couldn’t keep him indefinitely. I think Jesus was sad to see him to go, but he believed, the same way Jesus believes it for all of us, that Nicodemus’ story wasn’t over.

I am utterly persuaded that identifying with Jesus is something we live into, bit by small bit. Sometimes we hide away in fear. Sometimes we swallow our fear and come out into the light, only to dart right back into the shadows. Sometimes our love for Jesus wins the day; other days our inner sense of superiority wins instead. Sometimes the light of revelation finally dawns on our wearied souls, and sometimes we are more confused than we can bear. But someday, somewhere, everyone around us will think the light has been snuffed out for good, and somehow we will be the ones who see Light all ‘round and we will say to ourselves, “Why, the world looks brand-new, like I’ve just been born, and this wind feels like God’s spirit against my flesh, and I am filled with Light.”

May the hope of Christ keep its hold on you until Light has dawned in every dark corner of your troubled soul. Amen.