Sermon for Sunday July 22nd

This summer at Lutheran Campus Ministry we are meeing on Wednesday nights to worship.  I signed up to preach this week, so this is the sermon I did on Wednesday using the alternate readings from the lectionary.  This weekend is my family reunion and our reunions always end with a worship service on Sunday, so I'll be preaching this sermon on Sunday too.

As Nadia Bolz-Weber says "Sermons are spoken art form," so I hope you enjoy this, but I'm sure it is better in person.

Readings for Sunday July 22, 2012 : Ruth 1:6-18, Exodus 2:1-10, John 20:1-2, 11-18

Many of you know that I work at Riverside; it’s a Bible camp just outside my hometown of Story City about 25 minutes North of Ames.  I’ve worked in the kitchen at Riverside for about 7 years and before that I was a camper there.  One of the most special things about Riverside is the mime.  Now I’m not talking about a “guy in a white and black striped shirt, red scarf, and beret pretending to be stuck in a box” kind of mime. The mime at Riverside tells the story of Jesus without words.  A different set of camp counselors practice the mime each week and perform it every Thursday night. They wear colorful face paint and clothes to correspond to the character they are playing—the God/Jesus character has white paint, Satan has dark paint.  There are many other actors that take on additional roles, from demons to disciples; and their faces are usually mixtures of colors varying in darkness depending whether their character is more good or evil.  There is also one character with no face paint and wears regular clothes, this character is known as “humanity.”  This person connects the viewer to the story; they are us and show how God had each of us in mind when God created the world.  So the mime usually starts with creation and then the entrance of evil in the story of Adam and Eve, God coming to earth in Jesus and then Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

I’ve probably seen the mime a hundred times, but there is always something different that sticks out to me each time I see it.  It’s basically the same story every time, but my heart is in a different place each Thursday I’ve witnessed the mime. 

One of my favorite mime moments was a few years ago when my friend Red, a charasmatic and joyful woman, was playing Mary Magdalene in the scene from our gospel reading from today. When I’ve read this gospel lesson or heard it in worship my first thought has usually been “Oh silly Mary—that’s Jesus not the gardener!!,” because I get to see the story from the viewpoint of the narrator.  It wasn’t until Red played Mary that I saw the panic and concern that Mary Magdalene must have felt in that moment.  How all her hopes and dreams died when her Lord was crucified and if that were not enough: it appeared someone had stolen his lifeless body.  She was desperate to find the body of Jesus and bring some order to the terrifying situation that all who had loved and hoped in Jesus faced.  She was blinded by her fear and panic and didn’t even see that what she was looking for was right in front of her.  When Red played Mary it was a revelation for me to see the countenance of her face change from utter defeat to complete joy as she came to the realization that this guy was not the gardener but her beloved Jesus.  Her immediate response was to run to him with open arms and embrace him—to feel the life in the one that she thought was lost forever.  Jesus then commissions her to go and tell the others about his resurrection and she obeys running faster than she’s ever run to share the best news she’s ever heard.

How often do we face situations of panic and fear and run to all kinds of things in our lives other than Jesus?  Psalm 73, verses 23-26 says: Yet I am always with you;
    you hold me by my right hand.  You guide me with your counsel, 
    and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? 
    And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, 
    but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

This psalm describes how God is right here with us, now and always—holding our hand, and sustaining us when everything else fails.  But then why do we feel alone sometimes?  Why when the darkness seems to surround us do we not always feel the reassuring hand of our Savior?  All of our readings point to the fact that God is there.   Sometimes, like Mary we are too blinded by our circumstances to see Jesus.  We reach out to other things and people to sustain us when Jesus is right there.  In our first reading from Ruth, Naomi is done: her husband and sons are dead and she just wants to go home, she is bitter, mad, and heartbroken.  Her daughter-in-law, Ruth, decides to follow Naomi and identify herself with Naomi in every way.  All Naomi wants is to move past the loss of her family and go home. Ruth coming with her is just another mouth to feed and a reminder of her suffering.  God is there through all of this and even though Naomi can’t see it at first, God goes on to do immeasurable good through Ruth, even bringing her into the lineage of Christ.

And the story of Moses, what a great example of God’s presence in a time of despair.  The Pharaoh of Egypt saw how numerous the Hebrew people were and worried about them gaining power so he oppressed the people with slave labor and instructed all the midwives to kill the Hebrew baby boys as soon as they were born.  The midwives did not follow the orders and the Hebrew people continued to increase, but families still feared for their sons’ lives.  When Moses was born his mother did her best to protect him, but after 3 months she couldn’t do it anymore so she sent him down the river in a basket. I’m sure his mother and most of the marinalized Hebrew people wondered where God was at this time.

            Somehow that basket that Moses was in ended up on the bank of the Nile where the daughter of Pharaoh just happened to be bathing.  Pharaoh’s daughter accepts this child from a basket into her family, and little does she know he will change the course of history for the Hebrew people.  No wonder this bible story was made into the film The Prince of Egypt.  This is a tale that we can get emotionally involved in, a hero arises from the direst of circumstances to lead his people to freedom.   Now the real story is not that triumphant.  Moses is not always willing to risk it all to be the hero and needed lots of encouragement from God to get the Hebrews out from under the oppressive rule of the Pharaoh. 

            I do not claim to be any expert in suffering.  I have lived a relatively pain-free life thus far, but even in my smallest struggles; looking back I can see the hand of God.  I think Naomi’s anger at God for all the tragedy she’s faced makes her more real.  Moses’s struggles to follow God’s call are relatable, and Mary Magdalene’s blindness to her savior’s presence rings true with my life.  The Bible is full of stories of real people who sometimes struggle to trust God when things get rough.  But just because we can’t see God in our current situation doesn’t mean God isn’t there. We may not see the good God will bring immediately or necessarily ever understand our circumstances.   But when we do see God may we run to him with open arms like Mary and rest in God’s presence.