Freeing Jesus, Part 7: The Universal Jesus

 Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

 A warm welcome to each worshiper today. We celebrate you and offer you our friendship and love. We are a congregation of people who seek to grow spiritually, to become more like Christ in His compassion and acceptance of everyone while growing more aware of what it really means to be Christians today.

As a Reconciling Congregation, EPUMC affirms the sacred worth of persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities and welcomes them into full participation in the fellowship, membership, ministries, and leadership of the congregation.

 

 

 

943 Palmer Avenue, Schenectady, NY 12309 / 518-374-4306 epumc943@gmail.com / www.easternparkway.org

Order of Worship

April 9, 2023

Easter Sunday

10:00 a.m.

*You are invited to rise in body or spirit.

 

Prelude

Greeting and Announcements

Mission Statement:

We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth disciples of Jesus Christ.

Call to Worship:

Christ is risen!

God’s steadfast love endures forever.

Death never gets the final word.

God’s steadfast love endures forever.

Rejoice in this day of salvation.

God’s steadfast love endures forever. Alleluia!

*Hymn Christ the Lord Is Risen Today #302, v 1-4

Prayer of Confession:

Merciful God, we don’t always recognize Christ,

even when we are looking directly

at your Incarnate Love.

We cling to our assumptions

about how life on earth should unfold,

forgetting that life in your realm

shatters those expectations.

Forgive us when we go through our daily routine,

forgetting to look for the Risen One.

Forgive us when coming to worship

is more about seeing our friends

than it is about encountering you

and our Resurrected Lord.

Open our eyes and our hearts, O God,

to the full awareness of your presence with us,

in each and every moment of our lives.

We pray in the name of the Christ who is alive!

Alleluia and amen. 

Assurance:

The testimony of all the prophets is united in this message of good news: Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ receives forgiveness of sins through his name. Rejoice, for your sins are already forgiven!

Scripture Reading John 20: 1-18

The Resurrection of Jesus

20 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. 2 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.” 3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed, 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to their homes.

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look[a] into the tomb, 12 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. 13 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.” 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 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,[b] if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew,[c] “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her.

Sermon Freeing Jesus, Part 7: The Universal Jesus

Friends, we’re now in the 7th and final part of this sermon series I put together for the season of Lent based on the book Freeing Jesus by Diana Butler Bass. Today we’re at the epilogue, both of the book and of this season, and the title is “The Universal Jesus”.

We’ve spent the last six weeks talking about a short list of descriptor terms that our two thousand year old tradition has given to Jesus: Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way and Presence. There are many, many more descriptions of our Messiah that we could have explored, that Bass could have explored in her book, that those who lived before us in this life of faith experienced, and that those who come after us will know Jesus as. Certainly, there are names for Jesus used just between the three principle non-Jesus characters in this story–Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the unnamed disciple that Jesus loved. This mysterious, unnamed disciple that Jesus loved, whose presence opens so many more unanswered questions–did Jesus play favorites? Did he have a boyfriend? Was that dude the teacher’s pet? Was he just somehow superior to the others? Or did Jesus call all his disciples that?--may have described Jesus as a lover, as have many over the centuries of our shared faith story. It’s not just a romantic word, “lover”. It’s a description of someone who so embodied one thing and one thing only that it was all anyone saw when he was around. Especially after the Last Supper, the disciples may have described Jesus as Bread and Wine, as he asked them to. They may have described him as Sustenance. Nearly every time I deliver the benediction, I describe Jesus as our Redeemer. As the one who brings us back to spiritual and moral wholeness after all we’ve been through, and after all we’ve put others through. Or, if a different image works better for you, Jesus is the one who finds you like a bottle on the ground, emptied and discarded, lifts you up, takes you to the the bottle redemption center, and shows you that you have worth. Then he puts you to use.

You may have a name, word, or image for Jesus that I won’t guess because it’s based on a personal story or experience. Mary Magdalene had one, “Rabbouni”. Though, at one glance, that word was simply an Aramaic variation of Rabbi, which means “teacher”, which was one of Bass’s chapters, Rabbouni was something more to Mary, and Jesus recognized it. It was what Mary always called Jesus. It was the glow of the lightbulb in her mind the instant she recognized Jesus again after her loss. Maybe that phenomenon–what brings back the light after your loss–is another of these names for Jesus. Maybe that’s who Jesus was to Mary and Martha when their brother Lazarus died. 

I have a special descriptor for Jesus, one that’s going to sound really weird until I explain it–Hinge. Like in a door. He’s the one who opens things up. He’s the one who makes it possible for us to come in. The door was always there, but Jesus is the one who makes it functional. He’s the one who allows us across the various thresholds of this journey, whether it be a threshold of grief or trauma, a threshold of recovery, a threshold of forgiveness, a threshold of sanctification, and eventually the threshold into heaven. 

Much more than that, Jesus is not just the literal tool, but the other two dictionary definitions of the word “hinge”: Jesus is that upon which we all depend, as in “it all hinges on Jesus”, and he attaches, brings together.

We all depend on Jesus in the same way we all depend on water–perhaps “Water” is what the woman at the well would have called Jesus–and y’all already know from a few recent sermons that I believe this Flowing Water is freely available, and already nourishing to all, no matter what you happen to personally believe about him. Why would the Well care about your opinion of it? It quenches your thirst either way.

And we depend on Jesus because of what he uniquely does for the human race. He makes it possible for us to not just survive the greatest forces of oppression, malevolence, and violence that the world can exert, but for something precious to come forth from that suffering. This is why he didn’t flee Jerusalem before he could be apprehended, why he didn’t perform some kind of Messianic Miracle to prevent his death at the hands of the Empire. He got on the cross and represented an image we have seen so many millions of times we’ve nearly become apathetic to it: a poor, young, unarmed man of color snuffed out be classism, systemic racism, and mob violence before he ever had a chance. He died for us, and he died absorbing us. All of us, even our very worst parts. We took what the worst of us had done, and buried it. We let it die.

But the power of empathy and love subverted even the harshest edges of the human condition into a Life-Giving Power, another name for Jesus. Jesus overcame the very worst of us, and then shared that Good News first with someone he trusted to share it the right way. Not Peter, his Rock but who he also knew to be fickle, and not even the disciple he loved. 

Mary Magdalene. In great humility, she knew it would be hard to get others to listen to her, and she in no way thought of herself as a VIP bringing you the most important thing. Someone eternally thankful for the life she found in Jesus, someone fiercely devoted to him, who absorbed his teachings like a sponge, who stayed at the cross when few others did, and who lingered in the cemetery when the men who had been with her gave up and went back home. Mary would never let go of a notion that our current reality may be incredibly bleak, but it can get better. Mary understood the resurrection. Mary saw the Hinge.

Mary saw the world the way Jesus did, with unending love, and also with realism. She saw the world ripped into a million pieces and scattered into the wind, like spores on a dandelion. She knew Jesus so greatly desired to bring everyone together again, like a Mother Hen gathers her chicks. But Mary understood why that would be so hard. She was a young, single, poor woman who two thousand years of people have assumed was a sex worker even though she never said that. She had no agency to speak in public, nothing that was hers, and no standing whatsoever. But she learned the most precious lesson from Jesus: love. And she knew that the salvation of the world would come from the Hinge that is Jesus. He had brought hundreds together to hear him teach and see him heal, and the Good News of his life could bring us all together again.

A different way to look at this: relationships, specifically friendships, save us. True friendships, based on accountability and filial love. The kind Jesus taught his disciples. Mary saw them all flee, but also knew they didn’t go very far, and they could be gathered again. She knew others probably wouldn’t listen to her, but the eleven surviving disciples would, and that was an excellent first step.

Take some time to try to reflect on your own special words for Jesus, whether they’re any of the ones I’ve lifted up in the last seven weeks, or this morning, or whether they are unique to you. Do you have special words for Jesus that reflect something you see in him, something that could be a blessing to someone else? If so, it would really be a shame not to share that.

Jesus, to me, is a Hinge that attaches the whole world to love and justice. That threshold was always there, but he makes it accessible. He also hinges me to those I have lost in this life, who I know are waiting for me in heaven, like my grandparents. 

The Good News of the life we all find in him is right within reach, and we, like those scattering dandelion spores, can plant it and make it grow.

Alleluia.

Amen.

*Hymn He Lives #310

Offering

Offertory

*Doxology #94

*Prayer of dedication           

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

On this Easter morn we welcome you Jesus into our lives. 

We welcome your resurrection for it is 

life changing, life giving and life sustaining. 

We welcome the hope it brings to our world.  

We welcome the joy it brings to our darkness. 

We welcome the empty tomb for we know that it means you are on the loose. 

 

Lord, may your resurrection give life to those who feel lifeless,

those who are just going through the motions,  

and those who have had the death of a loved one. 

 

Lord, may your resurrection give hope to those who are mired in despair, 

who feel hopeless, and who have given up all hope. 

 

Lord, may your resurrection give joy to those who feel no joy, 

lost their joy or have had their joy snuffed out. 

 

Lord, may you be on the loose in this world as the risen one.

~ written by Abigail Carlisle-Wilke, and posted on Rev Abi’s Long and Winding Road blog.  http://vicarofwadley.blogspot.ca/2010/04/easter-sunday-morning-prayer.html

Our Father, Mother, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

*Hymn Easter People, Raise Your Voices #304

Benediction

Postlude Streets of Galilee

---

Staff

Natalie Bowerman Pastor

Betsy Lehmann Music Director

Joe White Custodian

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant