Seminarian Sunday

Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Happy Easter to you all. I had a lovey retreat up at Chico this last week. I got to visit Yellowstone National Park again despite the heavy snow that still made most of the roads impassable. How many of you have been to Yellowstone National Park? How many of you have been more than once? Twice? Three, four, five!?

When I think about the Easter season, I think about places like that. Places that draw us to them over and over and over again. One could assume that if you've been there once, you're done and you can check it off your list, right? Why go back? You've seen it!

The reasons we keep returning to Yellowstone are easy and numerous. We want to see it in all the different seasons. We want to see how the seasons change the landscape. We want to see the young bison and elk that are new to the park. We want to see if we'll catch a glimpse of a grizzly or a black bear. We want to see an eagle, a geyser, a waterfall, a coyote, or something else we rarely see. We want to breath in the sights and sounds and smells of nature. It does something for our souls.

The better question is why WOULDN'T we keep going back?

At the north entrance to the Yellowstone National Park is the Roosevelt Arch that reads "For the benefit and enjoyment of the people." And as I drove under it, I thought, what would happen if we put that plaque at the church entrance? A flat out testament and proclamation that Christ is for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. Of all people. An open invitation to come and worship.

Would it somehow make church a place we want to keep coming back to? A place where we want to go more than once or twice a year? A place where we are eager to see new faces and catch a glimpse of the extraordinary? A place where we come to feed our souls and find rest? A place where we come to stand together in justice and love of all creation?

And while church might be all those things for most of you, I know many believe the church is dying. It isn't really a place where most people want to go anymore. In part, I believe this is because we seem
to get distracted by the ordinary or even the ugly parts of church. I've heard a lot of people say they've been 'burned by the church" and thus, won't ever come back.

Funny, that while we are walking around or driving through Yellowstone, we don't care about the large and numerous piles of dung, the blacked trees in burnt forests, or the man-made bridges and roadways that dart through and interrupt the natural beauty. We accept the ugly as part of the beauty there.

And yet, we come here and expect all the beauty and none of the mess. We want perfect music, perfect messages from the sermon and liturgy, perfect flowers and banners and bulletins, and perfection from our
brothers and sisters in Christ. I am not removed from this. But I've come to realize that the ugly and the beauty go together. The dark with the light. I grew up in a church were the pastor wasn't the best
preacher but that just made me love the liturgy and the hymns even more. I come from an imperfect family whom I adore because of their imperfections.

As a people, we can drown in our pursuit of perfection, especially here as we seek the body of Christ. We are like Jesus' disciples in the gospel today, locked up in a room, so afraid of death. And yet, even as we are trapped in our fears, Jesus shows up in our midst. Says "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." We are pulled out of fear and into new life. Quite literally, Jesus is sending us away from those things that bind us and trap us. Not only a fear of death, but a fear of anything ugly or ordinary or imperfect.
Jesus has set us free.

What I find remarkable is that a week later, those same disciples are up in their room... again. Not out. Not proclaiming. Not doing what Jesus wanted them to do. And while I might give them the benefit of the doubt and say they might be taking a break from sharing the good news that Christ is risen, I'm not ready to let them off the hook yet.

We tend to focus on Thomas who missed that first visit when in reality, I wonder why the other disciples are still hanging around. Though Jesus tells Thomas that those who believe and do not see are blessed, the other disciples have now seen Jesus twice!! Jesus could have easily appeared to Thomas at some time when Thomas was alone but Jesus thought it was important to appear to all of them, again. What that tells me is that they needed to see Jesus again. They needed to hear him speak again. They needed another sign.

In many ways, I see the church today as that room full of disciples, Thomas included. We pout that Jesus lived, died, and rose again 2,000 years ago. We pout that we do not see Christ. We imagine that life with Christ was easier. How easy it would be to believe if Jesus were in the room with us now. If so, we'd see past the ugliness of our world and see instead a savior, setting us free.

Do you see Christ? Because I believe God is with us in every moment. That spirit that Jesus breathed on the disciples we carry with us everywhere we go. And when we gather as a group here together, we form the body of Christ. We are the body of Christ. And we receive Christ again in the spoken Word. And we receive Christ again in his body and blood shared at the table. And we receive Christ as we share with one another the words Jesus shared with his disciples: Peace be with you.

Like those disciples, we are church. We aren't always pretty and we are never perfect, but we've been sent to proclaim the good news. It was those disciples, after all, who did leave that room and began to share the good news of Jesus Christ. These are the disciples that went out to proclaim that Christ is Risen!! He is risen indeed!! Alleluia!! They started the early church. In all their doubting imperfection and hesitation and fear, they are us, the church. Christ appeared to them, not once but twice. And Christ appears for us today, not once but over and over again, each time we gather.

Like Yellowstone National Park, Christ is for the benefit and enjoyment of all. We cannot soak it all up on one visit. We cannot take in all the beauty at one time. We are not able to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth to which Jesus loves us.

To say Christ is Risen! does not mean that Jesus won't challenge us, push us out of our locked rooms, and coax us from our fears. To say Christ is Risen! does not mean the church has magically become a
perfect place filled with perfect people. To say Christ is Risen! rather implies that we embrace both the ugliness and the beauty of life as the body of Christ. To say Christ is Risen! is to begin to proclaim to all the world the wonder and beauty of our faith.

We cannot remain in our rooms, in these walls, staying quiet and waiting for another sign. We see Jesus here and now. We see Jesus in the faces of our friends and family. In the beauty of Yellowstone and in our own back yards and gardens plots. In the delight of our pets and the animals of all creation. We see Jesus, continually calling us out of our fear and into the world to proclaim the good news.

And so, set free from our fears, embracing the ugliness and the beauty of new life in Christ, we proclaim with all those early Christians, "CHRIST IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED! ALLELUIA!"

Amen. +