Resurrection

 Sunshine through the open bedroom window. A single robin giving thanks as a woodpecker digs for breakfast in the distance. 

I start to say a prayer, but we need no words. We have both come back from the dead. 

The gospel of Life is Love. You are bathed in blessings, my neighbor and friend; baptized in the glorious, gratuitous sunlight of Easter morning. Open your window, your heart, your hands; catch a blessing. Then pass it on. 

Happy Easter from Pennsyltucky. 

Rising: Easter 2014

Dormont Presbyterian.... where I grew up

I have heard it at least three times in the past week. "Where do you go to church, now?"

Were they being curious? Kind? Offering an invitation? Making conversation? Whatever the case, the Communion of the Saints have been much on my mind lately.

Last night at midnight, I found myself online, looking for an Easter service. There's a little church in my neighborhood. I run right past it several times a month. A couple of the people in my classes at the Y worship there. Nothing to wear, though. I could handle being the only stranger. And I've gone to enough funerals in the neighborhood to be OK with being the only single white man in church. But sitting in the back row in khakis and a sport coat, wearing a shirt that needs ironing and shoes that are coming apart... it just seemed disrespectful to me.

There was a church once. (Not the one in the photo.) One I belonged to for years. The only place I ever really felt as if I belonged.  They made room for the kind of sinners, losers, failures and sons of bitches that Jesus used to hang out with. So, when I first arrived, there was a place for me, too. I went to their web site last night to see what time services were. I remembered a place where it didn't matter what you wore or how badly you'd screwed up your life, you could belong there.

And I remembered how much it hurt to watch a handful of angry people start to rope off the pews and lock up the side doors and back entrances. I fought them for as long as I could. Fought for the Gospel that had first welcomed, and then transformed me. Fought for the people who had found a church home for the first time in their lives. Before my fight was over, I wound up in a mental hospital. We lost. We lost the battle. We lost our home. I still believe that God lost, too.

But God will be fine. If Easter teaches us nothing else, we can be certain that God has a way of bouncing back.

Me? I'm not so sure about. And my church home? Judging from their web site, there is a thriving, loving community there now... but the my kind of trouble makers are gone. The people like me. The place that welcomed me is gone. I know the address, but there's no way back there for me. I drive a 14 year old Honda, not a time machine.

There have been other churches. Places where I was loved. Communities that offered me a place to rest or worship or serve. But my trust was gone. I didn't belong anywhere.

I know that's one of the reasons why it was love at first sight between me and the Y. I recognized the spirit of Christ there. Jesus was the woman whose bright smile and open eyes welcomed me on my first visit.  He comes there in bells and sneakers to dance in Zumba class. He arrives, laughing too loudly and covered with jailhouse tattoos to workout with the recovering addicts from across the railroad tracks, and tears up the weight room with them after supper to help them sweat out their demons. Jesus jumps into the deep water, helping his classmates to be brave and try, even if they are only 5 or 6 years old. He drops his children off at the Kids' Corner so he can go shoot some hoops with his buddies. And every now and then, on a dark winter morning, he limps in on frozen feet, and asks for a cup of coffee and a chance to sit down someplace warm before all the good, clean people who are so frightened of him start coming in to exercise before work. In some ways, those are my favorite visits.

I have sat in the lobby with Jesus on those days when it seemed like the sun was never going to come up and our lungs were never going to thaw, and he would tall me stories. Parables, maybe. About his family and how they had died or thrown him out because of his drinking. About the fortunes he had won and lost out at Keeneland over the years. The men he knew in the war. About how he could never live up to his father's standards or live down the heartbreaks of his past or find the love that would make him feel whole again. Once he told me about the years he spent serving as President of the World, and how he and General MacArthur saved the planet from nuclear annihilation. Just last week, he handed me a stack of pages torn from a children's coloring book and asked me if I would make him some copies to take back to the group home with him. It was the least I could do.

But every now and then, in a quiet moment, I'll ask him, "Lord, isn't there more? More for me to do? More for me to have? More for me to be?"

And every time, his answer is the same. "Pennsy, do you love me?"

After all we've been through together, it always hurts to hear him ask it.

"Lord, you know I love you!"

"Pennsy, if you love me, feed my sheep."

And that's how I know that I have found a place. Because here, where I might least expect to find them, the place is packed with Jesus' hungry sheep. I know, because I'm one of them.

You know, it's funny. This started out as a blog post about how sad I was that I didn't have a church home to worship in this Easter. Then right in the middle of the thing, Jesus shows up, smelling like a bus station men's room, and reminds me that he didn't have one either. Last Sunday, Passion Sunday, Christians waved palm leaves and sang Hosannas, and read a story about a man who was driven so crazy by what was going on in church that he started beating people up and busting the furniture. He made the wrong people very angry. And they made sure there would never be a place there for him there again.

So he found another place. One that no door could keep him away from. He rolled away the stone. Behind it, he found the world. He found you and me.

I'm not saying you can't find Jesus in a church pew. I'm not saying he doesn't go there or bless the people who do. But just like in Heaven, there are many mansions in the world. And while I miss the smell of lilies and the sound of organ music and trumpet voluntaries and the warm embrace of a hundred whispers of "The Peace of the Lord Be Always With You..." Even though I miss those things... I am grateful.

My heart may feel heavy as a stone sometimes, but there is no stone so heavy that the Love of Christ can't roll it out of the way to throw open the door and let the love pass through. And the only thing I am sure of is that when the tomb is opened, I will not find what I expect inside.

It is always so much more wonderful than I can ask or imagine. Once, I even met the President of the World.

The day of resurrection! Earth, tell it out abroad;
The Passover of gladness, the Passover of God.
From death to life eternal, from earth unto the sky,
Our Christ hath brought us over, with hymns of victory.

Our hearts be pure from evil, that we may see aright
The Lord in rays eternal of resurrection light;
And listening to His accents, may hear, so calm and plain,
His own “All hail!” and, hearing, may raise the victor strain.

Now let the heavens be joyful! Let earth the song begin!
Let the round world keep triumph, and all that is therein!
Let all things seen and unseen their notes in gladness blend,
For Christ the Lord hath risen, our joy that hath no end.

The Lord is risen, indeed. Happy Easter, y'all.

Peace,
Pennsy

#424: A Time For Reflection

In a few days, I will be celebrating a strange anniversary... the day, three years ago, when cancer came into my life. It seems like an appropriate time to do some reflection. I'm taking a look back through the eyes of the Fat Man...

Initially, I called the blog Pennsyltuckian. I thoiught I had a lot of wise, insightful things to say, and so I decided to write them all down so future scholars could know just how clever a guy Pennsy could be. It was an ego exercise, full of big words, obscure references, and sermonizing that I find kind of embarrassing today. But, based on the eternal principle that even a blind pig will find a nut now and then, I revisit this unintentionally prescient post from Easter of 2007. 

Saturday, April 7, 2007

The Second Day

Lift up your heads, O gates!
and be lifted up, O ancient doors!
that the King of glory may come in.
Psalm 24:7

Holy Saturday may be the strangest day of the church year.

It is invisible.

Thursday evening begins what is known in the liturgy as the Sacred Triduum - the holy three days. The feast begins with Maundy Thursday, followed by Good Friday, and concludes with the Great Vigil of Easter. Saturday is as quiet as the empty tomb. There is a brief liturgy for the morning, slipped in like an asterisk.

There is an ancient tradition about this day, but in our damnation-shy culture, we have soft pedaled it into silence. Mysterious reference is made to this tradition in the Apostle's Creed.

He was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell.

When I asked my parents about this unlikely phrase, they explained to me that in Greek, the word hades also meant a grave, so the creed was just affirming that Jesus spend a day in a tomb. This interpretation is so prevalent that in many parts of the contemporary church, the phrase has been altered to "He descended to the dead." He went where dead people go. He was buried.

John Calvin, who had no modern scruples about Hell interpreted the tradition another way. To him, Christ's descent into Hell was the spiritual completion of his fleshly passion. Jesus' redemptive suffering continued after his earthly death when his spirit, forsaken by the father, descended to experience the tortures of the damned in Hell. In Calvin's eyes, this made the price of redemption all the more precious and elevated Christ's sacrifice to a cosmic scale.

The apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (aka The Acts of Pilate) proposed a third explanation - one that has been embraced by the church for centuries. The Gospel of Nicodemus records the testimony of three men raised from the dead who came to Jerusalem to bear witness:

We then were in Hades, with all who had fallen asleep since the beginning of the world. And at the hour of midnight there rose a light as if of the sun, and shone into these dark regions; and we were all lighted up, and saw each other. And straightway our father Abraham was united with the patriarchs and the prophets, and at the same time they were filled with joy, and said to each other: This light is from a great source of light. The prophet Hesaias, who was there present, said: This light is from the Father, and from the Son, and from the Holy Spirit; about whom I prophesied when yet alive, saying, The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, the people that sat in darkness, have seen a great light.

This is not the Hades my father told me about. These souls were with the damned in Hell. With nothing but their own righteousness to commend them, they could not enter communion with God in Heaven. They had died without the redeeming blood of Christ.

Many artists have taken up this theme.Fra Angelico shows the Devil crushed under the broken down gates of Hell where Christ has flung them. Jesus' outstretched arm extends deliverance the the faithful dead. Traditionally Adam and John the Baptist are first in line.

Pieter Huys renders the "Harrowing of Hell" on a grand scale. In a graphic hell-scape reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch, Huys pictures the light of Christ piercing the darkness of Hell where some are redeemed, some are past hope, and some tortured souls cannot bear to even look upon the savior as he approaches.

Some of my favorite interpretations of the "Harrowing" tradition are those of the great German engraver, Albrecht Durer. One is startled by their intimacy. Here, it is the demons who are tortured by Christ's holy presence. The redeemed stand triumphant, pulled from the mouth of hell by a savior who is as much action hero as spiritual deliverer.
Durer's Christ bears the banner of a victorious warrior, reclaiming Hell's hostages to lead them home. Adam, Eve, and the Patriarchs have the look of people shocked by their own liberation, while the Baptist appears to be explaining who and what this man Jesus is, even as he did in life.


What happened on that silent Second Day? Certainly Jesus' body spent it in the hades of Joseph's tomb. Likewise, who could argue with Calvin's interpretation: Jesus' suffering could not be complete until he had endured the tortures of Hell. Still, the "Harrowing" is the most deeply rooted in tradition. The image of Christ reaching his powerful arm and lifting the faithful out of the fires of Hell is inspiring for two reasons.

First, it satisfies our sense of Justice. It is unimaginable that God would allow good people to suffer forever because of their ignorance of Jesus redeeming death and resurrection. Second, it assures us that there is no depth to which we can sink that is beyond the saving grasp of Christ. Not even the gates of Hell can separate us from the God who loves us and longs for our redemption.

It is Holy Saturday - the invisible holy day. The Lenten fast is not yet complete. The resurrection is not yet accomplished.

But in the silence, God's saving work through Christ has already begun.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

#402: Running and Resurrection

The Preacher made a very intriguing point this morning. Of all the scenes portrayed in in the Gospels, the one that is conspicuously absent is the Resurrection itself. We don't get to see the stone rolling, the wounds healing, the eyes opening. There's no earthquake, no angelic entourage. It's a moment that is so sacred, so intimate, that we are not privileged to see it. We can only live with the consequences. Maybe that's what makes Easter so holy to the Church, and so unfathomable to the secular world. The event that Christians consider to be the fulcrum on which the lever of history is anchored is completely invisible to us. We can't define it, dogmatize it, or box it in. 


As one of my atheist friends posted on Facebook today, "Come on, people. Jesus is not a Zombie." He's right. Jesus didn't just come back from the dead. Jesus was transformed by death into something completely new, and his transformation was so powerful that everything else changed along with him. Another friend posted this: 

Not to pick a fight, but I'm of the opinion that the Message was more important than the Man. Idolizing the Man is easy. Living the Message is Hard. 

Be hard.

Know what? I think my friend is right. The Man was killed that Friday afternoon. The Mesage, the good, Gospel news cannot be killed. And I also agree that idolatry is easier than living that Gospel. If all Jesus' did was replace golden calves with golden crucifixes, then his life and ministry were meaningless. Resurrection calls us to more than just admiration or gratitude. Christ's victory over death calls us to action. Because of that empty tomb, and the Jesus who walked out of it, we can live our lives in fearless love. Once you've stared down death, there's nothing standing between you and the godly creature you were meant to be except your own will.

So what does all that have to do with a Fat Man running? Everything.

I've never died, but I've met people who have. I met a man who was dead for so long that the doctors were sure he could never come out of his coma. Met him before he ran a 3K road race. Cancer taught me a thing or two about resurrection, too. The scarred, toothless creature typing these words has very little left in common with that 400 pound neurotic lying unconscious on an operating table while the lab discovered cancer in his biopsy specimens. As a trainer with LIVESTRONG at the YMCA, I work every day with people who have been transformed by their victory over death. They are tougher, braver, more determined, and more compassionate than they were before cancer. And they share a special burden.

Because we have lived through cancer, and we know so many who have not, we who are left to fight have a unique vocation. We have been called to give hope back to the world. When you're overweight, and you see someone who should be dead pumping out miles on the bike or swimming lap after lap, it tells you that you can do it too. When a woman who has had most of the muscles in her chest removed is grinding her teeth and pumping out bench presses, she it telling you that you can overcome your own obstacles. When a man who knows he is going to die spends his days visiting with cancer patients, giving them an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on, then all of us can believe we can overcome our own pain and do some good in the world with whatever time we have left. 

This vocation, this ministry hasn't been given to survivors because we're special. It's just part of what you get when you get your life back. It's hard. And it's the only meaningful purpose for anyone who accepts the gift of resurrection: the invisible miracle of the empty tomb demands that we be about the business of restoring hope to the world.

Cancer didn't kill me. My tomb is empty, too. That's why I run. That's why I fight for other cancer survivors. God didn't give me back my life so i could be the same, miserable, self-absorbed manI was before. Christ is the prototype. Resurrection turned him into a new creation. It can do the same for all of us. And in exchange, we can bring new life, love, and hope to the world around us.

Every runner is an evangelist, whether they want to be or not. People are watching us. Some of them are shrugging their shoulders and thinking, "That's nuts. I could never do that." But others are learning our stories and wondering, "If he can do that, maybe I can do it too." Maybe depression doesn't have to kill me. Maybe divorce isn't the end of the world. Maybe losing my job or my house or my savings doesn't mean my life is over. Maybe there is reason to hope. Maybe I can be a better person than I thought I was.

The Preacher finished his Easter homily with the strangest conclusion I've ever heard to a sermon. He said, "Christ is risen! DEAL with it!" And he's so right. Being a Christian means living as if the tomb is empty: as if YOUR tomb is empty. It means living the message: as if Jesus was right about loving your neighbor and your enemies and your God and yourself. It means knowing that life is a fragile thing, and can be snatched away in the most cruel and senseless ways, and that we need to treat one another accordingly.

It means that the battle against fear and death is one that's worth fighting. If  a homeless religious fanatic from Nazareth can beat them, then maybe you can do it too.

If a Fat Man can run, anyone can. You can. Believe it.

Happy Easter, y'all.

Peace,

Pennsy