3rd Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord

Christopher Nesti, hallelujah, Christ is risen.

Amico Thenesti, the Lord is written to me.

Hallelujah.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you must be departed.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and perfectly magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Let us pray.

Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming works, to literate with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

As you can see that our children in fifth grade and the level are invited to earn the word be their entire thing.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

The word of the Lord.

We will read Psalm 34, verses 1 through 14, responsibly by the half verse.

Psalms 34:1–14

I will glory in she who is strength.

And humble beer and rejoice.

Proclaim with me the greatness of he who is exalted.

And let us exalt your name together.

I sought to gave us, and she answered me.

Look upon her and be radiant.

And let out your face be shame.

I called in my affliction, and she who hears me heard me.

And all my prophets.

Taste and see that she who is delight is good.

Happy are they who are in her.

Revere she who is God, you that are her saints.

The young lions suffer want for food and starve.

Come, children, listen to me.

Who is the woman or man that desires life?

Keep your tongue from evil.

Turn from evil and do good.

Although he was a son, he learned obedience to one who saw.

And being made perfect became the source of eternal salvation for all who obeyed.

He has been called a high priest according to the order of Joshua by God.

About this, we have more than a word.

And it is hard to explain because you all have become slow in understanding.

You all ought to be teachers by this time, and you all need someone to teach you again the foundation elements of the oracles of God.

You all need milk.

And not solid food.

For everyone who consumes milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, being in any food.

But solid food is for the mature who, because of training of their senses, practice to distinguish good from evil.

The word of the Lord.

Jesus said, Truly, truly, I tell you all, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

For just as the living God has life internally, just so God has granted the Son to have life internally.

And God has given the Son authority to render justice because he is the Son of Woman.

Do not be astonished at this.

For the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out.

Those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

The Lord is risen.

We celebrate the resurrection of the Lord for 50 days.

So happy Easter is still like an appropriate thing.

Hence, we're doing this reading of the Lord is risen indeed.

As I mentioned to you on Easter Day, if you were here, I think the reason we have 50 days to think about resurrection is because we don't think about it very well.

Here's proof.

Jesus died, he comes back in such a way that he'll never die again, and his disciples say, Ah, is now the time you're going to make Israel a sovereign nation?

See, they mistake that new life means they get control.

So I don't want to disappoint you as your priest.

But if you're pining for the days where America is like the greatest place, that's not what church is about.

That's not what Jesus cares about.

That's not what God cares about.

Sorry to hear it from your priest, but it's the truth.

The resurrection is not about the resurrection of America, it's about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Those are different things.

And Jesus' response to the disciples, right, is that's not for you to know.

Which means I don't care and you shouldn't either.

Instead, he appoints the disciples to bear witness, and to bear witness in their homes.

And then he goes on to tell them, not just in Jerusalem, but to Samaria, like places you don't want to go, bear witness there, that there is new life to be had, even if it's different than you imagined.

So here we are, week three, in the seven weeks of this resurrection, and this is my not-so-gentle reminder that we usually get it wrong.

Maybe you grew up with less baggage than I do, but in general, because of my formation, and nobody was trying to do this to me, in general, I associate resurrection with going to heaven when you die.

And look, I just want to be clear, okay, that's maybe part of it, but did you see any of that in this story?

Did Jesus go to heaven?

Not yet.

So let's think about what resurrection looks like on earth, shall we?

I mean, again, I think that's what we're invited to do.

I think it's so, frankly, hard and, you know, in some ways transcendent that we'll just postpone all the value of resurrection until we're dead.

God help us.

So what do we hear in the story today?

Weird phrase, just as God has life internally.

Did you hear that?

Internally?

And the son has life internally.

So look there's this classic sort of trope on resurrection that you can read in folks like Richard Rohr, who really builds on the work of Thomas Merton, who I'm going to tell you builds on the work of Sigmund Freud.

And here's kind of what Richard Rohr would say.

I've read more of Rohr than I have of Merton, but again, Rohr references to Merton quite a bit.

Richard Rohr would say that part of the reason we hear this resurrection and this idea about dying so much, quite honestly, is that it is in some ways a metaphor for how we're called to live.

So Merton is the one who uses this phrase that all of us have a true self.

It's who God made in God's image and likeness.

It is inherently good.

And this is not about blame.

The truth is, there's a variety of factors for which we don't always live into our true selves.

In fact, we often construct something called our false self.

Now, there's reasons for it.

Sometimes our true self desires something it can't control and can't have, so we might settle for something we can control and have.

I can't always have joy, so maybe I'll just have happiness.

I can't always have charity, so maybe I'll settle for upward mobility.

I can't always know that my children are going to be happy with their lives, so I'll settle for them going to Harvard or at least Brown.

I hope you know what I'm talking about.

I don't want to say it's wrong.

I just want to say it's not our true self.

So what does Richard Rohr say we're meant to do?

What does Thomas Merton say to do?

How can we hear this in the gospel?

Well, quite honestly, our true self can't live until our false self dies.

And that's the language because it feels like death and it's scary.

I mean, listen, I've got to tell you, when I'm uncomfortable socially, I go to a persona.

That word Greek means I put on a mask.

It's not that I'm trying to hide who I am.

I just know how to be a role.

I know how to play a role when I'm uncomfortable.

So I'll play the role.

Because sitting in discomfort is not something we have evolved to do.

We don't like being uncomfortable.

I mean, do you?

So we know how to mitigate this discomfort by going to somewhere who isn't truly who we are.

It's a way of protecting ourselves.

And again, maybe the call is when we live into that mask and into that false self, we're actually already living in a kind of death, we just don't know it.

So what if we put that kind of living death to death so that we can have real life?

Now, if you want to hear this from Sigmund Freud, I want to hear you.

He's probably one of the most misunderstood people that there is because Sigmund Freud has three words, not two.

He doesn't say false self, true self.

He says you have your ego, which Greek is, it means I am, like I am who I am.

Sigmund Freud was Jewish.

He understands that this is God's holy name.

God made your ego and God beloved it.

You don't need to kill your ego.

You would die.

Your ego is good and it's beloved by God.

The problem for Freud is we've got two competing factors.

We have something called the id.

Maybe you've heard of this before.

The id says, I'm gonna get this thing, and that's gonna give me life.

It is this search to fill ourselves up with things to have life, no matter the cost for us and other people.

It is hoarding, it is shopaholism, sorry, it's alcoholism, it's sex addiction, it is things that will take us out of any healthy balance because we're just trying to stuff ourselves full of stuff.

And then there's the other part that's called the superego.

And the superego says, don't do that.

Mom says, no, that's not good.

You don't deserve that.

Suppress it! By the way, the id and the superego are both versions of the false self.

So, what would Freud say?

Freud would say we need to, frankly, kill our id and kill our super ego so that we can be our ego.

If you kill your ego, all that's left is dysfunction.

Kill the dysfunction so you can rise from the grave and live real life.

Now, look, I want you to know that uh the very first thing I got to do when I went to seminary is supervise ministry.

We call the SM.

Interesting, isn't it?

And for my SM, I was appointed to be a chaplain in a drug rehab facility in Atlanta for homeless black crack addicts.

That was really it.

And part of what you learn when you do the enemy recovery or the AA recovery system or Al-Anon or Overeater's Anonymous, right?

All of these are examples of the false self that will take life from you.

I hope we can agree on this.

Nobody thought I want to be an addict when I grow up.

What we say in recovery is my best thinking got me here.

Really want to make sure you get this.

Not my worst thinking.

My best thinking got me here.

Because I was powerless and I didn't realize it.

I thought I was taking control of my life by taking drugs, and they were killing me all of all.

It's really important that you hear that AA reverses the judgment.

Dummies don't end up addicted to drugs and alcohol.

It's not for dummies, it's for humans.

We get there because we think that's where there's going to be life.

We all know there's no life in it, but we just can't seem to figure out what else to do.

You ever been desperate?

God, I've been desperate.

And what we realize when we do the work of AA and NA, and I don't have one of those.

I don't.

I got other problems.

What we realize though is that recovery doesn't happen when we pray the sinner's prayer.

It doesn't happen in the moment.

You know how long you're in recovery?

Until you die.

Because it takes work day after day.

I don't care how saintly you are, it takes work every single day of the rest of your life to kill your false self.

Or to just let it die where the death it's going to take you to if you don't let it.

That takes work.

So if you're ever wondering, well, I just don't feel the presence of God because look, I haven't changed.

Welcome to the human experience, which is lived not in moments but in lifetimes.

This is why I think in the Lord's Prayer, we ask for our daily bread.

Because if you ask God to feed you for the rest of your life, well, it just wouldn't be, it just wouldn't be possible.

You know that one of the biggest problems for people who are struggling with addiction is that they realize they're going to have to live in sobriety every single day for 50 years.

And that can send them right back to the bottle because it's overwhelming.

Boy, I would rather climb up a mountain on my knees once than have to do that work every single day.

Wouldn't you?

But I want you to hear that this death of the false self of the superego and the id, that's the daily grind.

And it is what God has called us to do.

Now, I don't want to sound too heretical, but I'd like you to think with me that perhaps Jesus also had a superego and an id.

Well, Jesus was like us in every way, but he didn't sin.

That's because he learned to daily put those things to death.

And if Jesus didn't have to do that, friends, he's of no use to you or me.

Because the Easter message is that which has not been assumed cannot be redeemed.

If Jesus did not assume the struggle against the false self, the in and the ego, he is of no help to you.

So Jesus had to do this.

The letter of the Hebrews is the one that says that.

And Jesus does this according to Hebrews in a really, really interesting way.

Boy, I sure don't like this word, and I looked it up to make sure, and I still don't like it.

The author of Hebrews has translated it, or sorry, the translation we get is although Jesus was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.

And being made perfect became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

Now, I don't like that word obedience, and some of you know this because we've been here a long time, but I'm going to tell you why I don't like it, and then I'm going to tell you why it's a bad translation.

The reason I don't like the word obey is because I associate the word obedience with a differential in power, and I associate obedience with punishment.

If you don't obey, you will be punished.

Well, listening carefully and obeying might be the same thing in your head, but I want you to hear that in my head there is a big difference between listening carefully and obeying, because this one sounds like punishment and this one sounds like consequences.

What's the difference?

Punishment is about getting even, or about wrecking vengeance, or about inflicting pain, and consequences is you get what you paid for.

Now, as a parent, there are times I just want my kids to obey me.

Because then I'm in control.

And I already know that when I'm on my deathbed, what I really want is my kids to listen to me carefully.

And I want to suggest that when we cross those up, we've entered the false self that I was just trying to talk about.

Right.

We will grab what we can get.

Because I can't make my kid listen to me carefully, like with honor.

I can't make that happen.

But I sure can punish them if they don't.

I hope you hear what I'm saying.

I don't even know my statistics for when I do one or the other.

I do this a lot more than I'm proud of.

Which is why I think the gospel has something to say to me.

Right?

And I'll tell you as a parent, because I got two kids, they're real different.

Sometimes when I'm not getting either one of these things, it's gonna sound awful from your priest, but I start to enter into weird negotiations with death.

Part of my false self is that there were ways I could be disowned by my parents.

I don't know if your parents ever threatened to punish you with being disowned.

I don't know if my parents threatened me with that either.

Explicitly.

But I was aware that there were things that might cause them to shun me.

God help us if God's like that.

Really?

God help us if God's like that.

But I sure thought God was like that.

Because that's what culture said.

That's what was right.

I don't know what it would be for your folks.

For me, oh gosh, I've read the needle a few times.

Turns out they're more gracious than I thought they were.

I don't know if you've ever found yourself thinking, if my brother does this, he's dead to me.

I don't know if you've ever said, son, you do this and we're done.

I don't know.

Maybe it's never been that clear, but I do wonder if there are people who are dead to you.

I wonder about it, and I don't want to be too political, because I've been told that if you sort of have the wrong view about God or you worship the wrong God, well, you're kind of a savage and you're going to hell, so who cares anyway?

Where did I hear that?

On the radio this week.

People say things like that.

With power.

Who are you talking about?

I'll tell you later.

If you really don't know, I'll tell you.

And I want you to hear there's nothing godly about that.

There's nothing godly about that.

That sounds like the id and the superego masquerading as God to me.

Why do I want to name that critical point?

Because I think what Jesus did is the same thing we are actually asked to do so we can enjoy the lives we have.

And listening carefully to God might mean suffering.

Like when people reject me, I'll just reject them.

Isn't that what they want?

I don't know what they want, but I know that's not what God wants.

I know that.

To be honest, you know that too.

The truth is, trying to accept people who won't accept you is painful.

No, it's not the same suffering as, you know, getting a big abrasion on your arm.

But it hurts.

It hurts to pour yourself out for people who don't want to receive you.

Am I wrong?

So how is it that Jesus crucified his id and his superego?

He suffered.

I don't just mean on the cross.

I mean he suffered.

It's suffering to tell a Samaritan woman who's begging on behalf of her child, and you've told her, I didn't come for you.

And she says, Yeah, but even dogs eat crumbs.

It's a little bit painful to say, you're no, you're right.

You had like better faith than I did.

By the way, Jesus said that.

Like that's in the book.

Like, it's suffering to repent.

I like being right.

Don't you?

There's a lot of engineers here.

Don't you like being right?

Yeah, I think so, right?

It's suffering.

It's a little bit tough to say, I was wrong about that.

I was wrong.

Apparently, this is what Jesus did.

He learned to say, like, I wasn't right about that, or even though you reject my love, I'm gonna love you.

Even though you're abhorrent to my culture, because you've got leprosy, or because you've got a disability in your hand, or even worse, because you're a woman, I'm going to love you anyway.

Publicly.

Don't think that Jesus was a rebel without a cause and he just enjoyed, you know, upsetting everybody.

That's we have a word for that.

Those are sociopaths.

He didn't do it to make a scene, he did it because he cared.

This is suffering.

And I want to suggest to you that it is maybe by making these types of suffering that we experience ego life.

If you're trying to hurt yourself so that you can make God happy, stop.

That will not make God happy.

It won't make you happy either.

No.

This is not like suffering in order to suffer.

The suffering I'm talking about is pouring ourselves out.

Sean was really kind to let me be the celebrant today.

Because I needed to.

Sorry, I needed to.

I'll tell you why in a little bit, but here's part of why.

Um because I don't know who in your life needs you to pour yourself out.

I don't know.

But I know who needed it on Friday.

It was Marella Beyer, who has worshipped here for about 30 years.

Morella Beyer went into the ER because she had some arrhythmia.

She got a pacemaker and then she died getting the pacemaker adjusted.

And I went to the hospital because the nurse called me and said, listen, this has gone really bad.

And her heart is only beating because we have a heart pump beating her heart.

And she's really only breathing well because she's intubated.

Right?

That means she's got like a tube into her lungs.

Because she has pulmonary edema, which means like there's fluid in her lungs, right?

And she didn't want either of those things.

Like she has a living wheel, right?

Took a minute to find it.

So so we did.

And we're there with the POA, and the nurse says, listen, we've just come back, it's three o'clock.

So so we go, right?

We go.

And boy, I talked to her in the morning, and she was fine.

And and then she wasn't she went fine.

And um there ended up being three of us in the room, which was something.

Three of us in the room, and Morella, it's really clear she's responsive.

She's able to nod her head or shake her head.

She's really clear that when they remove the vent and when they turn off the heart pump, she's gonna die.

She knows that.

Right?

That's what she wanted.

It took five hours for them to do it.

I could get mad at the medical system.

I you know, but that doesn't really matter.

The truth is, here is a woman who knows she's gonna die and has to wait to do it.

And it was clear she wanted me there.

Now, Sean and I already have this exchange.

What do they tell us in seminary about keeping vigil with people who are going to die?

Do you want to know?

About nothing.

About nothing.

So what do I have?

I've got the prayer book which has in it two and a half pages called Ministration of a Time of Death.

I said, Morella, do you want that?

She said, No.

So I was out of resources immediately.

I just want you to know.

Right?

So how do you pour out your life with somebody who wants you there and whose own life is pouring out?

When I say it's suffering, I don't mean like it's to be avoided.

I just mean it's so intense to think about how to be with somebody.

Sure, we know God's never gonna leave them alone, but you aren't gonna leave them alone.

So how do you be with somebody and not leave them alone?

Like what does it mean to keep vigil?

And I've got to tell you, my head was moving the whole time, and it's exhausting to think, well, what would I want if I were her?

And she's not me, so what does she want?

So I asked, and and listen, she was able to respond.

I said, Do you want me to tell you some stories?

And she nodded.

So I told her stories.

I didn't know what stories she wanted to hear.

I don't.

So I told her stories about how I'd met her and what I appreciated about her.

And I told her stories about my kids because she she knew both of them, and most of you all only know one of them.

And I told her stories about her church, and then I told her stories about places I'd been in the world because she liked to travel.

And then I prayed the ministration for the time of death, but I didn't pray it out loud.

Just I didn't, you know, that was for me.

And then I asked her if she wanted me to read her some poems.

She was an engineer.

She scrunched up her forehead and shook her head.

She said no, right?

And why is it suffering to take no?

It's not suffering, but it's like, okay, now I know I need to figure out something else, right?

Like to be devoted to somebody for five hours, of course, it's holy time and it's a gift, and it is pouring yourself out for somebody else, right?

And listen, I don't know that I got it right.

I just know I stayed.

I know I stayed.

And I think we have times where we don't know what's right.

Because what is right?

I mean, I think that's the wrong question a lot of the time.

What's right?

I don't know what's right, as if there's only one thing to do.

But it's probably right to stay.

It's probably right to stay.

Because that's what she said she wanted.

I don't know why she wanted that, but that's what she said she wanted when she nodded her head.

So we st so we stayed.

And of course it's uncomfortable when we're trying to figure out how to unlock her phone.

And we need the six digits, and we've got the first three, and how are we going to get the last three?

We tried for 15 minutes, we couldn't, we couldn't figure them out.

And that's when she cried.

Because she knew the digits and she didn't know how to tell us, and we tried, you know, blink.

Yes, if it's one.

Okay, it wasn't one, you didn't blink.

Okay, was it two?

And we just we couldn't get it.

And why did we need to get into her phone?

Because we needed to take care of her and her family, and that's where everything's stored, right?

And so it's not painful suffering, it's that you're there and you want to figure this out.

You you want to be helping, you don't know if you're helpful or not.

And I'm gonna say it seems like it's better if we stay than if we leave.

I wonder if that isn't, frankly, like a simple way from my own life.

Yeah, and it may not be somebody's literally dying.

I think the truth is we know people are dying all the time around us.

They're dying of disappointment, they're dying of fear and anxiety, right?

And boy, it's really uncomfortable to be around that.

So do we just stay or do we leave?

I don't know.

But I'd like to think that Jesus learned to listen carefully to God because he leaned into the discomfort of staying.

Again and again and again.

You know when the disciples get him really wrong, they're like, oh, you're gonna make Israel great again.

He's like, listen, that's not why I'm here.

That's not why I'm here.

I'm here to bear witness that exactly in this suffering of pouring myself out for other people is where God is heard and where new life is found.

And again, I want to return, I want to be really clear about this word suffering.

It is painful to pour ourselves out not knowing where it's gonna go.

It is so painful.

I've said this before, if you have kids, if you knew that fasting for 10 years was gonna work, we don't do it.

We just don't know if it's gonna work.

We don't know if it's gonna work, and we don't like suffering for nothing.

And here's the reminder it's never for nothing to pour ourselves out for somebody else.

It is never for nothing, no matter how it feels.

It is never for nothing to pour ourselves out to be with somebody else because God is with them.

It is never for nothing that we pour ourselves out for somebody else.

Never.

Even though it's really painful.

Hallelujah.

Christ is risen.

Hallelujah.