If you invoke as Parent the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through Christ you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

1 Peter 1:17-23

Why would you plant trees in the middle of a pandemic?  

Martin Luther said, "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."  Actually, it probably wasn’t Luther, it was maybe confessing Christians in Nazi Germany.  Which actually might make it a better quote.  “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

And we still did plant trees this week, even if it was the process of donating money to plant trees elsewhere.  Our denomination, the United Church of Christ, helped facilitate this to celebrate Earth Day this week.  And you still can support planting trees by going to the website, https://www.ucc.org/plantatree.  

I donated to plant trees and I encourage you to do so as well.  But this still doesn’t answer why we would plant trees right now.

Why do something that’s so future oriented, something that takes so long to show results, when everything says, “Now is the crisis.  Now is the problem.  Take care of what is in front of you right now!”

But trees?  That takes longer.  Trees take hope.

My dad has always planted trees in his yard from the Arbor Day foundation.  They would come in the mail and they don’t really look like trees at that point.  They look like sticks.  And he would take these trees/sticks and put them in designated places.  You’d have to ask him for the exact percentage, but these tiny trees weren’t guaranteed success. Deer, for one, love these new snacks.  And disease.  And accidentally running them over with the lawn mower.  

Yet miraculously, a small number of these trees have actually become something I can recognize as a tree.  When I walk around my parent’s yard, I see trees that have taken essentially my entire life to grow.  

Trees take hope for the future.

People take hope for the future.

1 Peter is a complicated book of the bible.  We had a great bible study looking at this passage on Thursday.  (All of you are invited to bible study on Thursdays at 7pm!  We had people from three states.)  Part of what helps our understanding of books like 1 Peter is a community to read along with.  So know that I don’t come up with these ideas on my own, but by listening to you, too.  

One thing we had consensus on, and Geoffrey was very helpful in pointing this out to us, is that this is a scripture that could be abused.  There’s a line in this passage that says, “You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors.”  This has been used incorrectly by those who have thought to spread the message of Christianity by cutting others off from their cultural heritage.  

Which is why we have to read together and find out really what this passage is saying. 

I think of it this way.  And this is totally another example I received from talking about this scripture with Sarah this week. 

How can we go back to ever thinking that paying grocery store workers a “minimum” wage is sufficient?  How can we ever view the folks who clean our hospitals as non-essential and not worth our respect and compensation?  How can we go back to dead end ways of thinking, when Christ has ransomed, redeemed, and pointed out the value of those around us?

These, I think, are the futile ways that we are being called away from.  Just  because we have inherited a system that belittles people and takes their worth from how productive they can be, by how much we can wring out of them, that doesn’t mean we have to keep it.  

1 Peter shows a forward, hopeful way of understanding the world.  There is new birth, a future, a way of being in God that is not a dead end, not futile, not limiting.  There is a future, a hope worth believing in.  

The CEB translation says it this way in verse 23, 

“Do this because you have been given new birth—not from the type of seed that decays but from seed that doesn’t.”

Why plant trees?

Because we believe we, ourselves, our very being has a future in God.  We are redeemable, able to find new life in the future. If you need to hear this about yourself today, know this.  You are beloved and worth more than gold or silver or dollars or cents.  You are ransomed by Christ just as you are.

We also believe others have a future, a hope.  They are redeemable, precious, sacred to God.  We can look around us and not seek to cut people off from what is life-giving to them, but instead offer the courage we know comes from Christ to say no to dead, barren places.  To turn away from what has been unhealthy before.  There is a future to be had in God for all people.   

And not just people, but we believe creation can be redeemed. Little sticks can become trees.  

Through Christ, we believe in the planting of trees, because we have a future filled with hope.  

Thanks be to God, Amen.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).

John 20:1-16

I’ve been starting seeds inside for my garden.  They sit right there, on the bench in front of the windows.  They’re protected from what’s happening outside, even if they do have to submit themselves to the careful sniffing of our cat.  They’re beautiful little sprouts, hopeful and fragile before they become the sturdy, flower and vegetable producing plants they’re called to be.  They’ve gone through this week as we have, witness to open windows and warm temperatures, but also the snow and hail and rain.  

Through it all, they have one purpose: to grow.  And not just that, but since they are inside and next to the window, they grow in a single direction: toward the sun.

These little green shoots lean.  They lean hard into the sun. They are diligent, despite my attention and turning them to straighten them out, they can’t help it.  They lean into the sun, toward the light, toward the outdoors where they one day will be.  

We know Easter as a time of great triumph.  It’s loud and bright and full of celebration and joy.  Christ is Risen! It’s a trumpet-sounding, glory-filled time of death being toppled over.  But when I reread the story of Jesus’ resurrection for the hundredth time, I didn’t see any mention of trumpets.  This isn’t the story of Jericho, of grand defeat of enemies, of public spectacle. This is the mystery of an empty tomb that no one understands and one man who is mistaken for the gardener.  

As it turns out, you can whisper the message that Christ is no longer dead and it will still be heard.  

For as dramatic as resurrection is, this doesn’t seem to be an abrupt turnaround. It’s a little bit more like the trees.  The trees that are taking these weeks to remind themselves and us that leaves will return, that springtime green is like no other, that life can be coaxed back.  It’s like plants gently and persistently leaning toward the sun.  

Whispered or shouted, the resurrection directs us to living that is not overwhelmed by dying.  It shows us which way to lean.  

This doesn’t erase death, despite what you may have heard before.  “Where, O death, is you sting!” we have sung triumphantly. Well, I think the sting is right here and it never really goes away.  Later Thomas asks for Jesus to prove that it is actually him, and Jesus shows his scars--not a perfect, healed self.  

Death being defeated doesn’t vanish it, but puts it back into the context of life.  

The resurrection moved death from the event that overwhelms and swallows us, that makes day night, that punishes and harms, back where it belongs as part of what we will all experience, God willing, without great fear and at the appropriate time.  Resurrection reminds us, simply and gently, we do not lean toward death. We lean toward life.

Simone Weil, a favorite mystic and philosopher of mine, said, “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.”

Imagine the other phrases she could’ve inserted at the beginning of the sentence.

Certainty...is the foundation of the spiritual life.

Absolute faith...is the foundation of the spiritual life. 

But no, it’s “waiting patiently in expectation.”

Perhaps Weil read the Psalms, like the one that we hold close today.  

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,

    and in God’s word I put my hope.

I wait for the Lord

    more than watchmen wait for the morning,

    more than watchmen wait for the morning.

Do you feel equipped to wait?  Is that part of your spiritual toolkit?  How does patience factor into your interior life?  

We are all caught right now, in this world uniting and upending pandemic, in a moment of waiting.  Even those who still are in the midst of frantic work, at hospitals, in food service, and many more still must wait with us.  Even those of us who are busy still do not know the outcome of the pandemic. We predict, project, hope to understand those graphs, those curves, but we still don’t know. 

We all must wait to know, to see how we will be called from death into life.  

Martha waited.  Mary waited. Perhaps Lazarus waited, too.  

There’s a cruelty to the story of Lazarus being raised that I have a difficult time wrapping my head around.  Why doesn’t Jesus just save Lazarus from his illness in the first place? I share in what Mary and Martha say, “If you had only been here, Lord!”  None of this would’ve happened. 

Yet Jesus is on his own timeline, his own path.  We humans have not had much success forcing God to participate on our timeline, to heal when we would like.  Instead we must wait. We sit in the middle days, with Mary and Martha, unsure of where this is going.  

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,

    and in God’s word I put my hope.

I wait for the Lord

    more than watchmen wait for the morning,

    more than watchmen wait for the morning.

Yet God, the mysterious “I AM,” that is, I was, I am, and I will be, both arrives to us in the future, but does not abandon us in the now. 

We will still wait for what we hope for, for what we want.  Our desires to wish this all away will not be realized quickly.  I trust that you are sharing in the grief that I feel, of missing family and friends, missing our church routines, our space.  Grieving the loss of being able to go out to eat, to not have fear about a hug or handshake. Grieving the losses we know are still to come.  We wait for God to show up in ways we recognize. We wait as we continue to hear that impossibly heartbreaking word, “indefinitely.”

Yet God is already here.

Jesus said to Martha, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”  I get it, she seems to say. The resurrection will be later, at the very end.  

And what does Jesus say?

“I am.”

“I am the resurrection and the life.”

The life, the living, the right now.  Even while Lazarus was in his grave, wrapped and bound, Jesus still was the life.  

When we say, “How long, O Lord?” we are not saying God isn’t with us.  We simply give voice to the way that we don’t quite understand how God is at work in our lives.  We wait because we don’t know. And because we are people of faith, we learn to be okay with the discomfort of not knowing.  

Some have proposed that Easter is the end of our waiting.  Let’s wait no more, let’s end this. Let’s end our waiting chocolate, trumpets and hymns, churches packed full, they say.  Some imagine that is the resurrection. That our pageantry is the resurrection. And yet that’s not what Jesus said. He says, instead, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  We have the resurrection and the life with us right now. We can leave our building empty, waiting. We can be patient, I promise. 

It’s not just about us.  Simone Weil also said, “Humility is attentive patience.”  Which is to say, we are humble enough to care for others for doing what we can.  Leaving our building empty, while keeping our connections full. We can give it a week, a month, however long it is to wait, humbly knowing we do not have all the answers.  We can wait in God’s presence because God does not live at 415 Northfield Road. God dwells where you are right now.  

“Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.”

For you, my God, I can wait.  I can quiet, and imagine how you are here with me even now, in my living room, in my home.  I can wait for the outcomes I desire, trusting that you are a resurrection I could never imagine on my own.  

You might think this virus isolates us, but blame might just isolate us more.  

We read the entire chapter, all of John 9, to hear this story.  If you just read the first part, verses one through twelve, you might believe this is scripture about healing.  And that would be a very different sermon, one that might even seem more relevant for this time.  

But Jesus doesn’t seem to be all that concerned about his healing powers, so I won’t be either.  Instead of healing, what he talks about at the end of this chapter and the whole way into chapter 10 is judgment, who is in and out of these religious groups, and who is missing the point of his message.  Jesus talks about sin, the actions that separate us from a full life. These aren’t too dissimilar from the things the Pharisees, the religious leaders are also concerned about. Even the disciples are concerned about it.  Who can we blame when things go wrong? Who is responsible for hardship? Who is the source of these bad things? Who sinned? Everyone’s asking these questions. But Jesus is the only one who brings a new answer to these ancient questions--maybe even to us today.  

Here’s what we know.  There was a blind man.  He doesn’t get a name, but we know he was blind. But even before Jesus even interacts with the blind man, the disciples ask their teacher, Jesus, a question about this blind man. “Rabbi,” they ask, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Right here, at the very beginning, we get a sense of the way people understood the world to work.  The disciples saw a blind man, decided his blindness was a punishment, and the only curiosity they had about it was who they could blame for this blindness.  I’m sure they thought, although they should know better by now, that Jesus was just going to give them a clear answer. It was either the A. the parents or B. the man.  Someone was to blame. Jesus went with option C. none of the above. In doing so he upends the assumption that being blind was a punishment. Instead, Jesus sees it as an opportunity.  

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus said, “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”  

A very important note here, too.  Jesus doesn’t say that the man has to be healed so that God’s works might be revealed in him.  He just says that he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. Just a thought. 

After this conversation between the disciples and Jesus, that’s when this healing takes place.  Jesus spits in the mud, plops in on this guy’s eyes, makes him go wash, and that’s that.  

Except for the conversation continues.  Because this story just might not be about healing, but blame.  

Next up, we have the Pharisees being not so different than what the disciples were like. They have corralled this poor man to try to get answers about what might be happening. You might miss it, because the Pharisees ask a lot of questions about the healing, and are perturbed also that Jesus was healing on the Sabbath.  But at the end of when they were interrogating this man, they land in the same place that the disciples began, when they tell this man, “You were born entirely in sins.” This was really their ultimate concern. Which is to say, they still saw the man’s blindness as punishment for something or someone. Take away the blindness, and who is there to blame?  His healing upended their system of justice. How is there this structure of being able to point the finger at someone else if there is no punishment? What do we care if you were healed if it upsets our sense of order, of who is in and out, and how we are better than those we can condemn as sinners?

At this point, after all their questioning, the Pharisees are so distraught about this man and what he represents that they kicked him right out.  

Can you take a moment and imagine what this must have been like for this man?  If you think you’ve had a disorienting week, this might be your guy. He started out doing what he always did, sitting and begging.  And at that point, even though that doesn’t sound like the most fulfilling life, he also still was connected to his parents and his religious community.  Then, Jesus shows up, makes some mud with spit, and the man is healed with it. Then, everyone starts pestering him, when maybe they should’ve been still helping him. The crowds ask him question after question, lead him before the Pharisees, who ask even more questions.  Then! Insult after insult, this guy’s parents, who are petrified themselves, totally throw him under the bus. And now just because someone gave him some eye mud, the man who was formerly blind gets booted from his community. So you get your sight but you lose your family, all in this outrageously short amount of time.  We might see this as a miracle. This guy might have some other words for it.  

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, scripture says.  Jesus knew that he had been isolated and abandoned, and so, Jesus found him.  

Jesus found him! You might think the healing was the most compassionate thing Jesus did.  I think this is. When blame isolates us, spreads us out, keeps us from acting compassionately toward one another, Jesus finds those who are most vulnerable and reveals himself to them.  

It takes an awful lot of work to keep our Christianity a religion that is busy chasing alongside Jesus after those who are vulnerable, like the man who was healed, instead of hanging back and debating blame and sin with the Pharisees.  It takes a lot of work to keep our individual selves out of company with the Pharisees. While Jesus is off finding and caring for the vulnerable, giving them dignity and welcome and a chance to belong, we might be back bickering amongst ourselves.   

Perhaps you will feel that even more sharply in these times.  There’s going to be plenty of blame because we have plenty going wrong right now.  We have lots of words, talking heads, politicians behind podiums pontificating about failures, about what went wrong, about who is to blame.  And there is and will be time for justice and accountability. That’s a message Jesus was familiar with, too.  

But let’s not lose sight of those who have been kicked out, who are truly isolated, waiting for Jesus, waiting for us who are supposed to be like Jesus to find them.  We can see blame, or we can see opportunity.  

God’s works might just be revealed in us, too.