When the Truth is too Inconvenient

April 23, 2017             2^nd Sunday of Easter                Matthew 28:11-15

We consider ourselves to be logical people.  Show me proof and I’ll believe it.  Can’t show me proof?  Then expect me to remain a skeptic.

Or are we really as logical as we think?

Why then are there braille instructions on drive-up ATMs?

Why do drug stores make sick people walk to the back to pick up prescriptions while health people can buy cigarettes at the front counter?

Why do people order a double cheeseburger, large fries, and then a Diet Coke?

Why do people fill their garages with worthless junk while their cars worth thousands of dollars sit outside?

This has improved somewhat, but still, hot dogs come in packages of ten while buns come in packages of eight.

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavoring buy dish soap contains real lemon juice?

And why oh why do jars of peanut butter have the label, “Warning, contains peanuts”?

Here’s the truth.  We’re emotional creatures.  We like to think that we like proof, but we don’t really accept proof when the truth is too inconvenient for us.

I think our gospel writer Matthew is playing on this human tendency when he writes about what the guards at Jesus’ tomb do after the resurrection.  First of all there’s the bizarre task of guarding someone’s tomb.  This is not an honor guard like The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  From their perspective this is the tomb of an itinerant preacher whose followers all fled at his arrest.  I wonder what the guards talked about the whole time?

Whatever the case, we first met these guards on Good Friday when the chief priests and the Pharisees ask Pilate to have the tomb guarded.  Why guard the tomb?  They said to Pilate, “Sir, we remember what the imposter said while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will raise again.’  Therefore command the tomb to be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead,’ and the last deception would be worse than the first.”

Yep, there’s going to be deception going on, but it won’t be from Jesus’ followers.  As I just said, they all fled!

We meet these guards again at the resurrection.  You’ll remember if you were here last week that these big bruisers are so scared they act like dead men when the angel descends and rolls back the stone.  Meanwhile, the two women visiting the tomb are indeed afraid, but not to excess. 

But now the guards really are in trouble.  In those days if you were a prison guard and the prisoners escaped they didn’t exactly put you on paid leave while there was an investigation as to what happened.  If the prisoners escaped the guards were killed.  It tended to reduce corruption in the prison system!  So what is going to happen to guards guarding a dead guy who escaped from his tomb?!?

They go to the chief priests and tell what happened.  And let’s notice more parallels between these guards and the women.  The words Matthew uses are exact.  The women go and tell the disciples.  The guards go and tell the chief priests.  They are telling the same story – an angel, a stone rolled back, and a tomb sealed tight that is empty.  One group, the disciples, will respond positively.  One group, the chief priests, will respond the opposite to the same set of facts.

You’ll remember that the chief priests were worried about a deception by the disciples but who is doing the deceiving now?  In verse 12 we read that they devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers and tell them to perpetuate the lie: “His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.”  And if it comes to Pilate’s ears the chief priests will provide a cover up.

Notice a parallel with Judas too.  How much do they offer Judas to sell out Jesus?  30 pieces of silver.  A few weeks ago we calculated that silver was worth $256.65.  How much do they offer the guards?  We aren’t told.  It’s just, “A large sum of money.”  Also, on Maundy Thursday we read that Judas repented and went back to the chief priests trying to return the money.  He says, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.”  But they said, “What is that to us?  See to it yourself.”

Did they really care about Judas at all; Judas who is a fellow Jew and countrymen?  How about the foreign Roman soldiers who do not respect the Jewish faith or sovereignty?  They basically say, ‘Don’t worry.  We’ll cover for you.’

Don’t judge these religious leaders too harshly.  I don’t know if Matthew wants us to be offended by them, to roll our eyes at them, or to laugh at them.  The truth is they’re a lot like us.

We don’t like the truth when it upends our lives.  No amount of proof will change our minds if it is too inconvenient.  I’m not talking about nebulous things like climate change or potential dangers from immigrants.  I’m talking about real solid impact our lives directly things.

I remember a speaker at a seminar talking about this.  He said in crowds of senior citizens he sometimes asks everyone who’s had bypass surgery to raise their hand.  Then he asks how many of them changed their eating habits after the surgery.  Almost no hands go up.  One time he said I guy even held up a doughnut when he raised his hand!

My doctor says it is so discouraging that he wants to try to make people well, but what they really want is a prescription to fix their problems.  He says what people really want is for him to is to medicate against their lifestyle choices.

Families can be incredibly blind to the truth.  You may see it in your own extended family.  One person can never be right or good or successful no matter how much he or she accomplishes.  Yet another family member can do no wrong no matter what.

            A few years ago I did some hospital visits for a colleague.  The father had run a stop sign and caused a serious accident.  The mother was seriously injured, and while she would survive, she would never fully recover.  Yet the father blamed the driver who hit him.  The mother blamed the driver who hit them.  And the children blamed the other driver.  And all the other family members blamed the other driver.  Dad could do no wrong, despite whatever the evidence was.  That’s just the way some families work.

            Proof does not carry the day when the truth it points too is too inconvenient.

            We find this in the religious leaders.  No amount of proof would convince them that Jesus was resurrected.  They would go to great lengths to deceive and cover up.

            We do well to remember this in our own lives as Christians.  We are commissioned to spread the gospel throughout the world.  We’ll read that next Sunday.  But proof won’t convince anyone.  You can’t force someone to believe, not really.  Just like you can’t really force someone to change their mind.  You can’t legislate morality.  You can’t make a person have a loving heart.  Even the religious experts of Jesus’ day point blank refused to see what God was doing.

            And so, live the gospel.  Believe the good news of God’s love.  Spread it.  Share it.  Rejoice in it.  But know that it is not within your power to make someone else a Christian.  That is God’s work.  We do well to remember that God works in God’s own ways.  May we truly rejoice that it has been God’s work to bring his goodness to us.

Resurrection, the Possible Impossibility

April 16, 2017             Easter Sunday             Matthew 28:1-11

We all like things to be clear, crisp and straightforward.  We want to know what is right and what is wrong.  Is it true?  Is it false?  One of the things I found appealing in high school level science classes, and introductory chemistry and physics in college, is that the world seemed to fit into such neat and tidy categories.

But then I started to get into upper level classes.  Class work became not only more complex, but also less precise.  Right and wrong wasn’t so clear anymore.  One class in designing foundations for buildings and bridge piers always stands out in my mind as the epitome of uncertainty.  We were to design the footing for a bridge pier in a swamp; having no bedrock to speak of.  Steel or wooden piles would have to be driven deep into the muck, but how deep and how many?  There are mathematical equations you can use and scientific research to help you, but you don’t get anything definite.  All my classmates and I came up with the best answers we could.  Then to be sure we doubled or tripled the strength of our designs to make up for all the unknowns and to have a good factor of safety.

The professor said we were all wrong.  He said we should be using a factor of safety of at least five if not seven.  Five to seven times stronger than necessary!  And then he said something I’ll never forget.  “You use a factor of safety of five to seven; and then you just hope it stands.” 

You just hope it stands?!?  That’s the best you can do?  All your brilliance and all your resources and you just hope it works!  I don’t like that answer.

We long for life to be simple, but it’s not.  We want clear answers, but we don’t get them.  We want there to be no ambiguity, but it exists everywhere.

These days many people consider Christian faith and the Bible to be childishly simplistic; quaint at best, an insult to intelligence at worst.  If you’ve been here in worship over the last few months you’ve heard almost the entire gospel of Matthew read.  You know well that it is anything but simple or childish.  It is more like the work of a literary genius expertly using the highly sophisticated Jewish storytelling style.  You know well that Matthew likes complex things.  He’s not afraid to wade into even the murkiest of waters.  And he’s not afraid to leave his readers scratching their heads.

If you ever deeply immerse yourself in Matthew’s resurrection account you discover that it is loaded with contradictions and impossibilities.  You almost wonder if Matthew isn’t toying with you the reader and getting a good laugh at your expense.  There’s also a lot of subtle humor.

I want to look at just one – the most obvious one - and let it also speak for the rest.

Matthew sets the scene for us:  It is dawn on Sunday.  Mary Magdalene and another woman named Mary go to see the tomb.  They aren’t going to be able to do much because according to Matthew guards have been posted at the tomb to insure no one steals the body and claims he was resurrected.

The women get there.  We aren’t told how long they wait but suddenly there is an earthquake and an angel descends from the sky.  I don’t know how you picture an angel, but I wouldn’t imagine some cute little cherub with wings and a halo.  No, picture a muscular body builder; totally ripped.  Matthew says his appearance is like lightening and his clothing is white as snow.

He’s so terrifying the guards shook and became like dead men – appropriate given that they’re already in a cemetery!  The women are terrified too.  The angel says to them, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified.  He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.  Come, and see the place where he lay.”

Did you put your detective hat on and pick up on the problem?  The tomb is sealed with a stone.  It’s guarded.  An angel comes down and rolls the stone away.  And the next logical thing that has to happen is that the resurrected Jesus walks out of the tomb and says something like, “It’s good to be alive!”  Or, “Wow, what a night!”  Or, “Being dead can give you such a crick in your neck!”  But he doesn’t walk out of the tomb!  Despite being sealed with a stone and guarded by soldiers the tomb is empty!

Where’d he go?  Is Jesus a ghost?  If so, then where is the corpse?

The women don’t get it either.  Nothing makes sense.  Dead people stay dead.  Sealed and guarded tombs just don’t turn up empty.  Every clear, logical, reasonable, scientific understanding of reality they have is gone!  But it gets weirder.

In their fear and confusion and joy they run to tell the disciples.  Suddenly Jesus meets them!  How can this be?  How could he have gotten ahead of them?  They come to him and clasp his feet and worship him.

They clasp his feet?  Okay, so he’s not just some nebulous spirit.  He’s real.  He’s solid.  But then, …how did he get out of a sealed tomb?

If you’re familiar with all the recorded resurrection appearances of Jesus you know that they are all strange.  Jesus comes and goes through locked doors.  He suddenly appears, then just as suddenly disappears.  Yet he lets people touch him.  He talks to people.  He eats with them.  One time he even builds a campfire and cooks breakfast for some of the disciples.

Critics of our faith have long looked at these accounts and labeled them the imaginative ramblings of Jesus’ early followers who just wouldn’t accept that their leader had been executed.  We must admit that they have a point.  Doubts easily creep into our hearts too.

Yet if you’ve learned anything about Matthew as we’ve read his gospel you discover that he’s not an imaginative rambler.  At the very least you must admit he is a literary genius.  Of course that doesn’t prove anything at all, but it does show that you are learning about your Savior in the hands of a thoughtful and careful teacher.

I’m quite certain that if Matthew could have given us bedrock proof of the resurrection that we could build the bridge pier of our lives upon in absolute confidence and certainty he would have done so.  But that is not the nature of faith.  And that is not the nature of life.

Reality is not like a high school science class, is it?  You know that I love to push science to its limits – the absolute extremes of what the human intellect can discover.  Take quantum physics – that’s about as far as you can get:

Time is relative, not absolute?  Matter doesn’t really exist without energy?  Distance is an illusion?  Quantum physics tells us that everything we think is solid and reliable and predictable isn’t.  All of those thoughts prove nothing, certainly nothing about God and nothing about Jesus’ resurrection.  I can’t prove that.  No one can.  But in my mind at least, as I encounter what Matthew (and other gospel writers) have done, I realize they are struggling to grasp the ungraspable.  They are speaking of realities beyond what any human mind can comprehend.  Inasmuch as they can, they are describing God and what God has done.

It is pretty hard to expect someone to believe something that you can’t even describe to them.  It is sure to leave doubts.  That goes for anything: faith, science, history, philosophy.  But as we read on in Matthew’s gospel we’re going to discover something remarkable.  Matthew knows his readers are going to have doubts.  He knows they’ll struggle to believe the resurrection actually happened.  That it was for real, and not just a fairy tale.  

In two weeks we conclude our reading of Matthew’s gospel and we’ll discover that doubts and disbelief are actually part and parcel of Christian faith.  Said differently, Matthew’s gospel teaches that to have faith is also to have doubts.  For Matthew the opposite of faith is not doubt.  The opposite of faith is fear.

What Matthew does ask us to do is to trust in God.  In the children’s sermon I talked in very simple terms about good guys and bad guys; would that life really were so simple.  But simple or complex, full of doubts or solid in belief, we trust.  We trust that God is indeed capable of making good on promises.  And that those promises will be make good on in this life and the next.

Whether you believe whole heartedly or are riddled with doubts, whether your life is simple or complex, and whether all things are calm and in order or if your life feels like chaos; trust in God’s goodness and God’s ability to do the impossible.

Judas and the Unnamed Woman

April 9, 2017  Matthew 26:1-16

Our gospel writer Matthew has put two short accounts of events side by side and I think he intends us to contrast them.  The first is Judas agreeing to betray Jesus.  The second is the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus.  Let’s briefly look at each one individually, then see a contrast between the two, and then apply that contrast to our world today.

We’ll start with Judas.  He may be the most notorious villain in history.  Thus far we haven’t heard much about him though.  He’s only mentioned once before; Chapter 10, Verse 4.  There’s he’s just mentioned in the list of disciples, but he is noted as the one who betrays Jesus.

Even though Judas hasn’t gotten the individual spotlight he has been with us all along.  Every time Matthew mentions, “the disciples” we know Judas is among them.  Today though, notice that it is Judas who goes to the religious leaders.  He takes the initiative.  They have not put up “Wanted” posters for Jesus.  Many people want to clean-up Judas and invent motives for him.  Some suggest that he thought he was actually helping Jesus by getting him in front of the chief priests.  That would end this cat and mouse game that’s been going on for the last few days.  Some suggest that since Judas was part of God’s plan he should be forgiven.  Whatever the case, all of that is between God and Judas.  Matthew leaves Judas no excuses.  Judas comes into Jerusalem with Jesus and the other disciples.  He’s there for a few days and then decides to betray Jesus.  He goes to the leaders and says, “What will you give me to betray him to you?”  They offer him 30 pieces of silver.

Thirty pieces of silver is significant.  Our first reading was chosen to point that out.  In Exodus 32:31 we learn that 30 shekels of silver is the price of a slave.  If you injure one of my slaves so severely that he or she dies or can no longer work you would owe me 30 shekels for my loss. 

A shekel was approximately 14.5 grams of silver.  I looked up the current trading price of silver and on April 3^rd it was $0.59 per gram, or about $8.55 per shekel.  So for 30 shekels it would be $256.65.  So, Judas sells out his Lord and Savior for the price of a slave… $256.65.

I hope you are insulted.  Most people will do just about anything for the right amount of money, but most people wouldn’t betray a friend for $256.65!  Matthew wants us to be absolutely appalled at Judas here.  From then on Judas looks for an opportunity to hand him over.  Judas is filth.  Judas is scum.

Now we turn to a different person also on the bottom.  An unnamed woman comes to Jesus while he is at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper.  Notice that while we are told the name of the house owner we are not told her name.  John’s gospel suggests that it was Mary the sister of Martha.  Many people have speculated that it is Mary Magdalene.  Who knows?  Those ideas come from other sources.  I think it is important to note here that she is not named.  I believe that is deliberate.

She pours an entire container of very expensive ointment onto the head of Jesus while he at the table presumably eating.  This act was certainly bold!  I can just imagine such a scene with every social convention being broken.  You just don’t do this sort of thing!  The disciples are understandably angry.  They say, “Why this waste?  For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.” 

Now notice some contrasts with Judas.  Judas is named.  This woman is not.  Judas sells Jesus out for $256.65.  No amount is given for the value of the ointment.  Judas is in the innermost circle of Jesus’ followers.  This woman has nowhere appeared.  If you imagine this to be a stage show it is as if she just walks onto the stage, does her thing, and then walks off again never to return.  Yet which of the two is the better disciple?  Which of the two understands what is really happening to Jesus?

Jesus says, “Why do you trouble the woman?  She has performed a good service for me.  For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.  By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial.  Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is preached to the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

            This may be puzzling to us, but let’s keep it in context.  In the Interpretation commentary of Matthew (pg. 294), Douglas Hare points out that rabbis debated the relative merits of helping the poor and burying the dead.  They considered burying the dead to be a greater priority because it could only be done at a certain time while the poor could always be helped; plus it was a personal service or connection.   In other words, this may well have been a common understanding of the time. 

Whatever the case, she is certainly a mark of a faithful disciple.

I suspect Matthew is being deliberate but subtle when he contrasts evil Judas, with specifics and details, while good comes in the form of an unnamed woman who does an extravagant act of unknown value.  What is the subtle message?  That evil is limited.  It is contained.  It can be defined.  By contrast good is unlimited, uncontained, unbounded by anything.

You may remember that Matthew’s original readers were all too familiar with bad things happening.  They could probably give the names of people who acted just like Judas turning in relatives for ransoms and betraying friends.  Evil seemed all too strong.  It was all too close every day.  By contrast God’s good work felt weak and nebulous.  Jesus wasn’t coming back as quickly as they thought.  Their faith wasn’t making their lives more bearable.  It was making their lives worse.

Today we do not face this same situation but I think the same tendencies happen.  Look at the news on the TV, the radio or in print.  Most everything is about problems, failure, crises.  Our politicians of both political parties know that creating fear gets them votes.  If they can make you think that a decision or some legislation is going to create a doomsday scenario, you’ll probably join in reacting against it.

What’s the most effective way of getting elected?  Is it mostly putting forth the goodness of your agenda or is it tearing down your opponents agenda?  There’s some of both but I think the balance is on showing how your opponent will be bad.

Where does the news about successes and good things usually appear?  Late in the newscast, near the back of the newspaper section.

I think we subtly believe that the world is a generally bad place and failure and evil lurk everywhere trying to undo us.  Good seems all too small; all too weak.

What does Matthew’s gospel teach us?  Evil is not limitless.  It is bounded.  Actually it is quite small: $256.65.  God’s good work: too big to be defined, too big to be limited by names, too big to get a dollar amount.

Our challenge is to ignore the world which would think all is falling apart and we must keep unlimited evil at bay.  Instead trust that God is working and that God is good.  Good triumphs always.

Now, that triumph will not be easy.  Jesus certainly isn’t going to have an easy time of it!  Good can be exceptionally costly.  But it overcomes, always.

May you trust in God’s goodness and fear the bad, which is really quite limited and definable.  And may your life know the goodness of God now and every day.