Mark 15.1-39
+ This past
week at St. Stephen’s, we had something happen that has never happened before
here. On Wednesday, we lost two parishioners on the same day. Pat Butler was one of our senior members of St. Stephen’s, our second longest serving parishioner. Pat joined
St. Stephen’s in 1957, within that first year of St. Stephen’s founding. She
was a wonderful person. I always enjoyed spending time with her and talking
with her, either in person or on the phone.
Our new senior
member is Audrie McConnell, who joined on January 4, 1957. After Audrie, our second longest-serving member is none other than Harriet Blow—who, if you might remember, was not
expected to survive her birth and now, here she is, the longest serving member
of St.. Stephen’s. She joined in 1960.
Carol Spurbeck is next, having joined in 1961 and the Coffeys and Greta Taylor,
who both joined in 1962.
Also on Wednesday, Angel Brekke
died. Many of us will miss Angel. She regularly attended Sunday morning Mass,
even despite debilitating pain and health problems. She was here, though, on a regular
and faithful basis, always looking very put-together, with her bright red hair
and always smiling. She delighted in
being here, and being a part of the worship life and community life of St.
Stephen’s.
Losses like these are hard. They’re
hard for me personally, as I’m sure they are some many of us here this morning And
they’re hard for us as a congregation.
This coming week will be difficult
for the fact that we h ave to say goodbye to these parishioners, these follow
seekers of God, these friends of ours who were also family to us. But of course this coming week is difficult
for another very important reason as well. It is Holy Week. This is one of THOSE weeks. There is A LOT going on and, at times, it
seems almost overwhelming.
But, that’s just the way life works
sometimes. We, as followers of Jesus, now have to follow him through some
unpleasant places. We are forced to
follow him through the horrendous torture and through a brutal murder. None of us want to do this. We want our sunny, friendly Jesus. We’ll even take a scolding Jesus. We do not want this tortured, beaten, bleeding
Jesus.
But that’s what it means to follow
Jesus. It means that what we are about
to embark on is a very personal journey. Yes, we might relate to the crowd who
cry, “Crucify him!” Yes, we might relate to Peter in his denial or even Judas
in his betrayal. Or we might to relate to the women who followed Jesus or to
Jesus’ mother who must watch the torture and murder of her child.
But, the one
we really relate to is the one we follow. Why shouldn’t we? When we hear this
Gospel—this very disturbing reading—how can we not feel what he felt? How can
we sit here passively and not react in some way to this violence done to him? How can we sit here and not feel, in some
small way, the betrayal, the pain, the suffering?
After all,
none of us in this church this morning, has been able to get to this point
unscathed in some way. We all carry our
own passions—our own crucifixions—with us. We bear, in our own selves, our own wounds. Oftentimes
those wounds we carry with us—those memories and pains we lug around—cripple
us.
I can tell you in all honesty: I
carry them in my own life. At times, I carry those pains and memories of pains
with me as heavily as any cross. They
cause us to bleed at a moment’s notice. For
every pain, for every betrayal, for every emotional or verbal or physical pain
we carry with us, we are able to relate to what Jesus went through. And he, in turn, is able to relate to us as
well—here in our pain.
What this coming week shows us is that
every time we suffered and continue to suffer, God does too. If we believe that
God is not still suffering in us and among us then we are deceiving ourselves. If we do not believe that Jesus is not still
suffering the insults, the whippings, and is being murdered in our world then
we are blinding ourselves. If we believe
that Jesus is still, in a sense, not still being denied proper burial and is
dependent on the kindness of others to bury him, then we are have not been
paying attention.
The Gospel
story we heard this morning is our story in a sense. It is our story because we are followers of
Jesus and because we follow him, it becomes our story too. Every time we hear the story of Jesus’ torture
and death and can relate to it, every time we can hear that story and feel what
Jesus felt because we too have been maligned, betrayed, insulted, spat upon,
then we too are sharing in the story. Every
time we hear about people turned away, betrayed, deceived, and we can feel
their pain in some small way, we are sharing in Christ’s passion. When we listen to and share in the horror and
terror of the Germanwings Crash in the French Alps this past week, when a
mentally unstable co-pilot purposely and calmly crashed an airplane full of
screaming passengers into a mountain, then we understand how powerless we can
feel in the face of violence and death. When
we can feel the wounds we carry around with us begin to bleed again when we
hear the story of Jesus’ death, we too are sharing in his death, again and
again.
But the
greatest part about sharing in this story of Jesus is that we get to share in
the whole story. Look what awaits us
next Sunday. These sufferings and
hardships we experience today, are ultimately temporary. But what we celebrate next Sunday is forever—it
is unending.
The great Nobel-prize winning Swedish
poet, Tomas Tranströmer, died also this week, on Thursday. Tranströmer, in his wonderful poem, “Summer
Grass,” wrote:
“So much has happened.
Reality has eaten away so much of
us.
But summer, at last”
We, as Christians, understand that. We
get that.
So much has happened.
Reality truly has eaten away so much
of us.
But…
Easter…
At last.
Easter morning awaits us all—that
day in which we will rise from the ashes of this life and live anew in that
unending dawn. Yes, this morning we are mourning for our fellow followers of
Jesus, Pat and Angel. But our tears are dried and our pains are healed in the
glorious light of Easter morning. This
is our hope. This is what we are
striving toward in case we might forget that fact.
Our following of Jesus means
following him even to that point—to the Easter light that is about to dawn into
our lives. Our own Easter morning awaits
us as well.
So, as difficult as it might be to
hear this morning’s gospel, let us just remember that in the darkness of Good
Friday, the dawn of Easter morning is about to break. With it, the wounds disappear. The pains and the sufferings are forgotten. The tears are dried for good. The grave lies
empty behind us. And before us lies
life. Before us lies a life triumphant
and glorious in ways we can only—here and now—just barely begin to comprehend.
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