The preacher and the cockroach

I was reflecting on the task of preaching today and came across this little piece I wrote back in 2012. Although I'm happy to say this was the last time I ever shared the pulpit with a cockroach, I wish I also could tell you it was the last time I ever died during one of my sermons. 

Last Sunday, as I sat in the chancel, mentally preparing myself to preach, I looked down at the floor and saw a giant cockroach wedged up against the left side of the pulpit. It was lying on its back with its desperate little legs twitching in the air. That lovely image was still in my brain as I climbed into the pulpit and looked out at my congregation. There they were, waiting for a word from the Lord, and I was thinking about a near-dead cockroach.

 

I had an important message that day. It was all about denying ourselves, taking up a cross and following Jesus. Mind you, this is not something peripheral to the life of faith. For those of us who aspire to live Jesus lives, this is at the center. So why was I feeling like it was totally irrelevant to the lives of the people I was addressing? Most of them weren’t making eye-contact with me, and those who were didn’t seem to be blinking. Hello? Is anybody out there?

 

The more I talked, the more disconnected I felt. Was it that nobody likes to be reminded about how following Jesus isn’t always fun? Was it that I had preached on this so many times before that they must be tired of hearing it? Was my sermon too academic? Too humorless? Too devoid of honest-to-goodness, real- life examples? Should I have started working on it earlier in the week? Seriously, while I was talking, all of those thoughts were racing through my mind. I was second-guessing myself and a part of me was wondering if maybe it was time for me to consider taking up another line of work.

 

Certainly, I don’t preach for the praise. That would be bonkers. But it helps if I can sense some kind of connection with my listeners while I’m putting myself out there. It’s not easy for me to stand before a congregation and presume to know what I’m talking about. Sometimes I feel like such a fake and I wonder if they can all see right through me. Really, why should they listen to me? What do I know? Preaching feeds on all my insecurities. And every once in a while I have a Sunday like this, where I am praying for the proverbial trap door that will both make me disappear from view and put me out of my misery. With each word I spoke, I felt more and more like that cockroach, struggling to survive

 

I love preaching when I have a fire in my belly. On those Sundays, I can’t wait to step into the pulpit and watch the words fly from my mouth. I’m talking about something that burns within me, something I believe will transform the lives of my listeners. This is like an out-of–the body experience for me. Although I am a terribly self-conscious person, in that holy moment, all I care about is getting the message across as effectively as I can and there is not a self-conscious bone in my body. I have no doubt that there is a God-thing going on. There have been lots of Sundays like that for me. But this was not one of those Sundays.

 

Finally, I came to the end of the sermon. I left the congregation with a question, said “Amen” and sat-the-hell down, thinking that’s something I should have done about ten minutes ago. Thank God it’s over.

 

I looked down and saw no more movement from the cockroach. He died while I was preaching. Just like me. I died while I was preaching, too. Of course, the big difference between us is that I will live to preach again. Maybe that’s why Christian preachers get so worked up over the resurrection. We experience it on a regular basis.

 

The resurrected Body of Christ

 Preached at Ascension Towson, Easter, 2017.

“He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” That’s the message the angel told the women to proclaim to the other disciples. And they hightailed it outa there. 

They were full of fear and wanted to make some distance between them and that empty tomb. But they also were about to explode with joy. This was amazing news and they couldn’t wait to share it. They had a mission.

Suddenly, they were stopped dead in their tracks. It was Jesus himself!

They threw themselves at his feet and grabbed hold of him. And then, Jesus gave them the same instructions they had heard from the angel, “Don’t be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” 

And they did see him. The resurrected Jesus. A lot of people saw him. Like the women at the tomb, they spoke with him, and they touched him. It wasn’t just a resurrection of the soul. It was a resurrection of the body. 

We take comfort in that because at Easter Jesus defeated the power of death, not just for himself, but for us, too. And we trust that, when we die, there is a resurrection in our future as well. But what if there’s more than one way to look at this resurrection of the body stuff. What if it’s not just about something that will happen to us one day, after we die?

There’s another way Jesus’ resurrected body is revealed to us. And to get at that, let me share with you a bit of Lutheran theology, that is really just something that you can read about in the Bible. 

In Lutheran theology, being a Christian is never just about Jesus-and-me. We don’t have a personal Lord and Savior whom we carry around in our pocket. We Lutherans are really big on what we call the Priesthood of All Believers. We don’t stand before God alone, but we stand with others who receive God’s Word of grace with us. In fact, that grace comes to us through our brothers and sisters. Like the women in the Easter story, other believers bring the gospel to us and we bring it to them. 

We stand together as a community. We support one another on our faith journeys. Together, we discern what God is calling us to do in the world. And together we do it. It’s not just about Jesus and me. It’s about Jesus and us. 

And here’s the really big thing about the Priesthood of All Believers. The Bible describes this unity we share with the metaphor of a body. We are the Body of Christ. As Teresa of Avila wrote so eloquently back in the 16^th century:

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,

No hands but yours, no feet but yours.

Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world.

Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good.

Yours are the hands with which he is to bless people now.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

Sisters and brothers in Christ, we are the resurrected Body of Christ. 

Of course, the Body of Christ doesn’t just gather in this place as an end in itself. We gather to be strengthened through the love we share with one another, through the hearing of the Word, the Meal we receive, through the music that sends our spirits soaring, through the gratitude we express to God with our words and our hearts. During this time when we meet in this place, we are nourished as Christ’s Body so that we can be Christ for the world around us. 

• When we’re welcoming the stranger at worship, or advocating for the stranger in our community, we are the resurrected Body of Christ.
• When we’re providing lunches for the homeless, or tutoring students in an underserved school, we are the resurrected Body of Christ.
• When we’re welcoming neighborhood children into our nursery school or supporting Lutheran Campus Ministry, we are the resurrected Body of Christ.
• When we’re sending quilts to provide a loving embrace for those who feel abandoned, or praying for brothers and sisters in Nicaragua, we are the resurrected Body of Christ.
• When we’re caring for aging parents, we are the resurrected Body of Christ.
• When we’re exercising justice and compassion in our place of business, we are the resurrected Body of Christ.
• When we’re speaking out on behalf of those who can’t speak for themselves, we are the resurrected Body of Christ.
• When we’re offering a word of compassion to the forgotten, the brokenhearted and the lonely, we are the resurrected Body of Christ.
• When we’re acting in love for the least among us, we are the resurrected Body of Christ.

Whenever we’re doing the work of Christ in the world, we are his hands and his feet, and his eyes, and his mouth. We are the resurrected Body of Christ.

“Don’t be afraid,” Jesus said. “Go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Ascension Lutheran Church in Towson. There they will see me.”

Flowers, schmowers

Before I had the chance to greet anyone at church this morning I already had steam coming out my ears. When I pulled into the parking lot, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The day before, my friend Sandy and I had planted 108 begonias in the church yard and already, less than 24 hours later, at least a dozen were missing. At first I thought the squirrels had been digging in the dirt, but when I investigated the crime scene further it was obvious that someone had come along and stolen the flowers.

Can you believe that?! Now, this is an urban congregation and we have had problems with things being stolen through the years. We’ve already learned not to put flowers out in pots because the entire pot will disappear. And we can’t leave Christmas wreathes hanging on the doors or people will help themselves to the free decorations. But making off with flowers that have been planted in the ground in front of a church? Oh, come on!

Well, let me tell you, I was in an S.N.I.T. while I prepared the sanctuary for the 8:30 service. The first few people who entered the building got an ear-full. I even took them outside to point out the pitiful little gaps in the ground.

The next person who walked in the door was about to hear the news, too, but, before I could start in, she threw her arms around me and wept. I had been so wrapped up in my own little morning drama that I completely forgot about her husband's appointment to see an oncologist last week. But her tears reminded me. “It’s cancer,” she said. He had been diagnosed with liver cancer.

At that moment, while I enveloped her sobbing body with my arms, I remembered what I had preached about on Easter morning. I had proclaimed that Easter isn’t about a gaping hole in the ground; it’s about our encounter with the risen Christ. And while I was busy whining about the empty little holes in the flower garden, my dear friend was crying her eyes out over a loss that was beyond anything she had ever experienced in her life. She didn’t need to see a hole in the ground; she needed to see Jesus. She needed to know the power of the resurrection that comes to us just when all our hopes have been ripped to shreds.

Flowers, schmowers.