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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Resurrection is way more natural than you may think. It's right there in your longing, a hope that what is dead will come back to life. It is the sixth Sunday of Eastertide, and throughout Eastertide, we've been in a series called Strange New World. It's about how the resurrection makes life strange, but, like, good strange. And one way to think about what we're doing with this series is that it's a series on the sacraments.
Speaker 1:Though granted, many Protestant churches only name two sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist. We've been on about four so far. Today makes five. All in the service of considering how the risen Christ is present in everyday life. So a formal definition of sacrament is an outward and a visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
Speaker 1:And I like that. But what I also like to think about is how ordinary substances and ordinary moments hold like little trap doors into the sacred. So we have talked about how grapes crushed and bread passed between us keep the Eucharist meal at the center of how we remember Jesus. And we've talked about how a calling to love and serve the world energizes us to participate in the mission of the renewal of all things. We've talked about how the water of baptism identifies us with the wider family of God.
Speaker 1:Last week, I talked about how marriages and partnerships are ways we organize ourselves for God's healing. The backbone of last week's sermon was Jesus' teaching about marriage and divorce in Matthew 19. And if you flip through Matthew nineteen and twenty, you'll see this focus on domestic matters. Now the family unit in the Roman world was meant to be this microcosm of the empire. And Jesus takes this model and reorders it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Union is sacred just like God intended. But you can do so much more with family than mimic the power structure over you. So last week, I offered a new metaphor in the spirit of reimagined family. One where we shape the love in our lives into pocket parks.
Speaker 1:These little places of remediation and flourishing that bless the world with transformation. So maybe marriage can be a sacrament for us too. A means by which divine love becomes visible and present in the world. So today, in our final installment in Strange New World, we are taking a darker turn toward death and dying. I didn't whistle this week but I did give you that.
Speaker 1:But first, let us pray. Loving God, present with us here today, we are grateful for the ways that we can explore so many layers of faith. That to follow Jesus is to be connected with the rhythms of our bodies and the seasons and to see how the divine permeates at all. For the ways that our habits of faith have maybe grown hollow or lacked meaning or felt stale. Spirit, won't you renew them with new life?
Speaker 1:We pray. Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. Amen. So we are talking about death and dying today and that is a heavy topic. And I wanna give you a couple of ways that you can ground yourself through this sermon.
Speaker 1:If it feels a little heavy, I want you to return to your breath. I want you to notice when you breathe in, and let your exhale be just a little bit longer. That will bring you some calm. And the second is to remind yourself of something that brings you delight. Maybe the smell of coffee in the morning, the warmth of sunshine on your skin, the way your friends eyes crinkle when they smile.
Speaker 1:Name that delight and it will help too. And trust that I have taken care with my words and however fresh your grief may be, it is all welcome here today. So we'll be in Matthew nine and we will talk about grief, small d, big d death, ordinary and eternal time and arsmorendi. So while he was saying this, and just to stop for a pronoun check, what's the this that Jesus was saying? Well, sandwiched into a string of miracle stories that follow the sermon on the mount, Jesus has just made the point to the pharisees that the disciples, they don't need to fast while he's around because he's like a bridegroom to them.
Speaker 1:And what Jesus means is that wherever he is, life is lived like a feast, not a funeral. Those grief rituals, they have their place but in their time. And just as he's made that point, a synagogue leader came and knelt before him and said, my daughter has died but come and put your hand on her and she will live. Jesus got up and went with him and so did his disciples. So feasting and fasting, they're not so far apart after all.
Speaker 1:In Matthew, this story is pared down. The Greek actually leaves out the detail of what kind of leader this guy is. Mark and Luke say he's Jairus, the synagogue leader, but Matthew says he's just leader. And maybe what Matthew wants his audience to see is that it doesn't really matter who you are. You might have a fancy title and everyone might know your name but in the end when you encounter death, you'll have to face it like everyone else.
Speaker 1:Death levels you. And the first thing you'll wonder is, can I reverse this? Is there some way to undo death? Now the stories we'll encounter today in Matthew nine tell deeper truths than the surface drama that unfolds. I mean, are you meant to hear these stories and ask, if I could just get close enough to Jesus, will he resuscitate my loss?
Speaker 1:There's evidence that might not work out like you hope it does. Your loved ones have died. My loved ones have died. And so far, there is no evidence that we can reverse that. So right here, on the edge of this unfolding drama, what I want you to notice is that it's perfectly normal to want to undo death.
Speaker 1:And in that desire, resurrection is way more natural than you may think. It's right there in your longing, a hope that what is dead will come back to life. When tragedy strikes, we are the leader running out of the house, looking for a dramatic change in the story. But then there's disruption. Just then, a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak.
Speaker 1:She said to herself, if I only touch his cloak, I will be healed. And Jesus turned and saw her. Take heart, daughter, he said, your faith has healed you. And the woman was healed in that moment. There are incredible details in this story.
Speaker 1:This woman has been bleeding for twelve years. She has a uterine hemorrhage, which accounts for not just her physical pain, but her social isolation. In this woman's culture, due to her bleeding, she's unclean and everything she touches is unclean. These are rules of ritual purity. And I love how we get access to her inner voice in the story.
Speaker 1:She says, if only, if only. And then she trespasses the laws that keep purity customs in place. Now Matthew includes another detail here. The woman doesn't reach out and grab Jesus' hand or poke at his calf muscle. She touches the edge of his cloak.
Speaker 1:And the Greek word for edge also means fringe or tassel. And Matthew's astute Jewish audience would notice that tassels make Jesus a good Jewish man. Deuteronomy 22 commanded that tassels be on the four corners of a cloak. So there's Jesus covered and a woman unclean. And she reaches from way outside in.
Speaker 1:And there's a desperation that unites the seekers in these stories from their opposite ends of status. They both want to undo the force of death. And for centuries, Christians have had specific ways of classifying death. We could call the distinction small d death and big d death. A small d death is a natural physical event.
Speaker 1:It's decay and illness, it's accident and aging, it's what makes us mortal and not divine. But there's another force, a little bigger, a little scarier, and that's big d, capital d, death. This is a corrupting power, an enslaving power, the perversion of all that is good. And I'm gonna argue that small d death is clinging to this woman. Sure.
Speaker 1:I mean, how long can you survive in the ancient world after a decade of hemorrhaging? Small d death clings to her like it clings to all of us. But that's not all that clings to this woman. Big d death is there too. It's in the way that she has been marginalized and set aside and avoided.
Speaker 1:What has made her life so miserable is how the situation has dehumanized her, replaced love and mercy with fear and ostracization. Jesus does not only see past what hurts her body, the source of small d death, but when he turns and really sees her and names her daughter, he addresses the lies of big d death. He insists that mercy comes before the law. And with that, she is restored. She's alone, no more, free to live, what, maybe twenty more years in the company of those she used to avoid for their own good.
Speaker 1:We live with these forces too. The way death is a part of the changing seasons, the end of a good life lived, Grief that reminds us we are so grateful for who we got to love before they were gone. But we also live with a kind of death that we aren't meant to accept or accommodate. These are the forces that destroy the climate and places of peace and the possibility that there might be enough to go around. These are the forces of division and abuse and structures more demonic than any devil we might blame for their harm.
Speaker 1:And in a moment, we'll talk about what resurrection really means to the deaths that we live with. But I would be remiss to not address what it just feels like to live with death. Either because someone you love is gone, or you're facing a terminal illness, or you are just sad because life isn't what you hoped it would be. And there are many models for helping you with grief and loss. Kubler Ross' Five Stages of Grief when you're facing your own death.
Speaker 1:There's Warden's Four Tasks of Mourning, which is about actively engaging and finding meaning in loss. Models can be helpful. But I've been contemplating one that's honestly new to me. It's called, and I'm sorry, this title is no fun whatsoever, The Dual Process Model for Coping with Bereavement, developed by Margaret Strobe and Hank Schucht. And it's quite simple, really.
Speaker 1:Here's a little diagram from my journal, and I realize it's completely illegible. I actually told Jonathan I was gonna share it with you as is, and he jokingly said, Bobby, what if people think you're a witch? Because my handwriting is so bad. I mean, it does look cool. Right?
Speaker 1:If you like witches. But back to it. On the left, the column is labeled loss oriented, and on the right, it's labeled restoration oriented. And in the middle, the zigzags represent everyday life. And what you're doing when you're grieving is going back and forth between these states.
Speaker 1:Loss oriented is the intrusion of grief. It's sadness and anger over what is lost. It's crying over what's broken. And restoration oriented is attending to life as it has changed, doing normal things, getting distracted, even laughing and finding pleasure. And the point is that you oscillate between these two poles.
Speaker 1:One minute, you're focused on the grief, the next, you're focused on rebuilding your life. It is a dynamic process between confronting bereavement and adapting to life in its wake. I think for as long as you hold grief, you oscillate. And it's the frequency that changes. And all of that is so normal.
Speaker 1:Of course, it is possible that you could fall into a much smaller percentage of people who experience complex or prolonged grief, and you may require additional help. Help that you can get from rituals and a faith community so you are still in the right place here. But shifting gears, can we work out a theology of death and resurrection with this reality of grief as such a normal part of life? I think that we can. So when Jesus approaches the leader's house to attend to another daughter, he hears a noisy crowd and sees people playing pipes.
Speaker 1:He says, you can go away now. The girl is not dead but asleep. But the crowd laughs at him. This guy doesn't know. We've seen this lifeless body.
Speaker 1:And eventually though, the mourners are thrown outside, and Jesus goes inside and takes the girl by her hand, and she is raised. And news of this spread throughout the region. When Jesus arrives, a funeral is underway. And even the poor were expected to have at least two flute players and a woman who wails at their funerals. So this more affluent leader's home is rowdy.
Speaker 1:Now Matthew uses an unusual verb for sleep to make a parallel between sleep and death. And in doing that, his readers see death for what it is, temporary. Like sleep, it can't last forever. And that's why this story is so special, so gospel. It's not that the daughter is actually sleeping and the funeral processors don't know it.
Speaker 1:Jokes on them. This story shows the truth about the nature of death in the presence of Jesus. In fact, the verb for the girls rising, eguero, is the same verb used for Jesus' resurrection in Matthew twenty six and twenty eight. So this is a get ready for it story. Like, here's a tiny baby resurrection before you see it in full.
Speaker 1:And I actually believe that we need to experience some form of resurrection before we know that it's true. And that's not as dramatic as it may sound. I mean, Jesus didn't raise the girl in front of a crowd or make a big scene when he brought her back to life. There are no pyrotechnics here. He just takes her by the hand.
Speaker 1:It's a quiet story. And maybe so much of what we're doing as we make meaning in our lives is practicing quiet resurrection too. So we could be ready for something bigger and stranger up ahead. Maybe you know a quiet resurrection when you hear of kindness and forgiveness in places of devastation. Maybe you know a quieter resurrection when you survive a horror and it somehow makes you someone you're really proud to be.
Speaker 1:Maybe you know a quieter resurrection when the spring blossoms bloom out of dormant winter branches. Now, I've gotten away from actual death and actual dying. So let's talk for a moment about the Christian funeral. There are two kinds of time being honored at a Christian funeral. One is ordinary time, linear, historical, how we experience the end of a life, Its ups and its downs.
Speaker 1:It's the character formed in us between birth and death. The second is eternal, divine, transcending our idea of time. It holds wonder and the transforming power of love and the biblical hope that leads to the renewal of all things. Now it's confusing when we try to sort out what the scriptures say about what Easter means to our dying. There's this belief that we will be present with the Lord when our ordinary time comes to an end.
Speaker 1:Think about what Jesus says to the thief on the cross, today you will be with me in paradise. But there is also this belief that there is a collective resurrection of the dead on the eschatological day of the Lord. And the apostle Paul says, we will all be changed in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. So which is it? Do we know resurrection as soon as we die?
Speaker 1:Or is it something more mysterious up ahead? And in the mystery of faith, both are true. The scholar at Juergen Maltmann jams these beliefs together, writing, the hour of every individual death in this present time leads directly into the eternal day of the Lord. The story of two daughters have always been intertwined. They're intertwined in Mark and Luke and Matthew.
Speaker 1:And as Jesus restores a woman back to community and back to her body and as death simply evacuates in Jesus' presence, bringing a little girl back to life. We see how the reign of God presses in on the present moment, and the eternal God never stops raising what is dead to new life. This hope is always intertwined. So when we gather to grieve, we hold what is ordinary and temporary with what is divine and eternal, and God meets us in both. So how do we live in the shadow of death and dying?
Speaker 1:Now no one can promise that death won't hurt. But there's hope that death in all of its dimensions will lead to a renewed and resurrected state. Now in the fifteenth century, through the Black Death and all the social upheaval that followed across Western Europe, some Christians wrote this little book with woodcut pictures called Ars Moriendi. In Latin, it's translated, the art of dying. Now, the woodcuts are creepy.
Speaker 1:There are these gaunt people in beds surrounded by battling angels and demons, perhaps not how we picture a good death. But the spirit of the thing is still instructive. It says, you know you're going to die and you should prepare for that. Learning to die requires attention. Jesus prepared his friends for his death throughout his ministry.
Speaker 1:He prayed an anguished prayer in the Garden Of Gethsemane to prepare himself. He instructed John to care for his bereaved mother, and he even kept the scars of death in his wounded but resurrected body. So, to finish today, I'm going to offer you a checklist, a few simple ways you can turn your attention toward the art of dying, even just a little bit. The first, don't be afraid to think about death. When it metaphorically taps you on the shoulder, say, oh, hello.
Speaker 1:I see my impermanence. I see the possibility of losing someone I love. Acknowledge that death is a part of life. Second, actively grieve. Grief is everywhere.
Speaker 1:It is under a change of a job or relationship status. It's there when a trip comes to an end or a child leaves home. It's there when a season is over or you're simply aware of your aging. Oscillate between loss and restoration, and remember that's so normal. And third, make space for death stories.
Speaker 1:Show up at the funeral. Look those who have lost someone in the eye. Bear witness to the death that surrounds us in this world. And find a way to let go when it's your time. But also trust this.
Speaker 1:Trust this Easter promise amidst it all. Christ is the center of all life. Christ is life itself, and therefore, Christ is your life too. Let us pray. Loving God, we do take a moment to sit with grief, to let it rise up and to simply acknowledge it.
Speaker 1:The world that you have made evolves because death gives way to more life. So may we be brave as we face our mortality and as we hope for and live for the mystery of what might come next. Jesus, you lived in ordinary and eternal time, and may you lead us securely through both, spirit of the resurrected one, enter the places of our grief and our sorrow, and heal us of all that harms us. Amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Speaker 2:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.