Day 307 - And He Was a Samaritan

A Sermon presented at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN Oct. 13, 2013
OT reading: 2 Kings 5:1-16
NT Reading: Luke 17:11-19

What are we to make of the connection between these two stories of lepers who have been healed?

Let’s begin with Luke and ask, "What is Luke telling us with his Gospel?"  If we read Luke carefully looking for the thematic focus of his Gospel, starting with its prologue we realize Luke is explaining the story of Jesus as the prophetic fulfillment of scripture.

Luke shows how Jesus used children; the dregs of society (the outcasts, the poor and aggrieved) to tell us something about the obligation of faith and entering the kingdom of God; and to call out those who have failed the Law or hide behind it.

Luke begins telling this prophetic fulfillment of Israel’s hope in the first sermon of Jesus. Luke tells us Jesus read the proclamation of Isaiah 40 (found in Luke 4:16-19):

(16) “When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, (17) and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: (18) “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,  (19) to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jesus has come to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Luke shows this prophetic image of Jesus in various ways. He compares Jesus with Elijah and Elisha several times. In that very first sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus continued (Luke 4:20-30), and chastised the response of the religious leaders and members to his proclamation saying they will say,

 (23)…Doctor cure yourself! (25) “But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; (26) yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.

Now I am going to stop here in Jesus comments because the story of the widow is important. (1 Kings 17:1-25) Elijah befriended a starving widow and gave her a jar of grain and a jar of olive oil that will never empty until the famine lifts, but while he was there her son died. Both the widow and Elijah blamed Elijah for his death. Elijah prayed to God to bring the child back and the Lord did it. This resurrection caused the woman to understand and say that Elijah speaks with the voice of the Lord.

The Jesus continues to the story of Naaman in the next verse (Luke 4:27-30):

(27)There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” Luke tells us (28) “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.”

Naaman was an Aramaean, a Syrian like Abraham; but also he was the general of the Syrian army the Lord used to defeat Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha (who lived in Samaria).  Naaman had taken a young Israeli girl as a spoil of war to be his wife’s servant.  
Naaman had a problem, he suffered from leprosy. The  Hebrew girl knew Elisha lived in Samaria and could heal Naaman. She convinced Naaman’s wife to talk him into going there to be healed. Naaman followed protocol and went straight to the King of Israel with a great fortune and ask to be healed.  The king panicked. He knew he couldn’t cure anybody and accused Naaman of trying to start a fight that would lead to a Syrian reprisal.

Elisha hears of this visit and sends for Naaman. When he arrived Elisha told him to wash in the Jordan River seven times and he would be healed.  Now The Jordan River was more a muddy creek than a river compared to the “great” rivers of Syria.

This instruction angered Naaman and he stormed off because he was expecting Elisha to command him to do some difficult task. But Naaman’s servants persisted telling him, “you were prepared to do something difficult if you were commanded to do it, if you don’t have to do anything more than just go wash in the river, why not just go do it?”

Naaman did as Elisha commanded and was healed. He then returned to Elisha with his large sum of money insisting on paying Elisha. Elisha refused and Naaman vowed never to worship any god but the Lord. Naaman experienced a conversion to Judaism through his faith that God has healed him. Not Elisha.

With Naaman in mind, Luke begins this story of the ten lepers. True to form the first thing Luke does is remind us where we are, “On the way to Jerusalem” heading to the cross.

The ten lepers knew of Jesus because they call him “master.” Like Naaman, they are probably expecting a command to perform some task to bring about divine action and the power of healing. But Jesus  says and does nothing to the lepers except, “Go show yourselves to the priests so they can verify you are healed.” At this point we only know they are ten lepers. The command. "go to the priests," suggests they are all are Jews. 

One interpretation of the story leads us to conclude they were not healed before they left Jesus but on the way because they obeyed the command of Jesus to go see the priest. They were healed as a result of their obedience.

In such a case, Luke is giving us a lesson about the gratitude of the only one who realized Jesus healed him and gratefully came back to praise God; in contrast to the ingratitude of the other nine who failed to return to thank Jesus.

However, once we discover the person healed was a Samaritan, the story takes on a more complicated tone making this a Jew vs. Gentile story. The Samaritan, as you know, was despised as a heretic and not allowed in the Temple.  As a leper he is a double outcast and the priest will refuse to examine him. So not only is gratitude involved, it is the gratitude of the infidel, the outcast Samaritan and the ingratitude of the Chosen people. The outcast gets the message but the nine Jews do not. I think there is more to it.

The most important part of this story is the healing and faith revealed in the last verse (19). The story does leave us uncertain whether the nine Jews knew they were healed before they saw the priest.  Did they intend to rely on the priests to tell them they are healed rather than understand, as the Samaritan did, that they were healed when they obeyed the biding of Jesus and left to see the priest? Jesus did tell them to go show the priests and if they felt Jesus had healed them all would be grateful and return to give thanks. In other words, if they have faith that Jesus healed them as an act of grace, kindness or kindness, ingratitude would not stop them from returning to Jesus to acknowledge god's work, as it did not stop Naaman. Perhaps they experienced healing but not salvation?

Since Jesus wonders why did only the Samaritan return, it is pretty safe to conclude the nine never returned to offer gratitude or thanksgiving because they did not have the faith that God’s presence was the critical ingredient.

Faith takes front and center when it is revealed the Samaritan understood (saw) he was healed by God’s presence. Luke tells us, “When he SAW he was healed he turned back to Jesus.” No one told him who healed him, rather he instinctually knew he was healed because of the power of the Lord. This Samaritan knew he was healed in God’s presence. He act is gratitude. Luke’s language leaves nothing to misunderstanding. Luke says the fellow returned to Jesus and threw himself on the ground prostrate at Jesus feet, praising God in a loud voice and thanking Jesus for this act. The Samaritan foreigner understands God is acting in Jesus, perhaps as Naaman understood God was acting in Elisha.  Luke adds his own commentary to the narration to emphasize the point. You can almost feel the bite of irony that not a Jew but a Samaritan returned to praise God as he comments, “And he was a Samaritan.”

Jesus asks, “Where are the other ten?” leaving us to wonder where.

As I said the last verse captures the core message (17:19). Jesus turns to the Samaritan and says, “You are raised to a new life, go on your way.” Though it is often translated in the vein of  “Get up and go your way;” the Greek clearly reads Jesus on the final leg of his trek to Jerusalem saying, “Arise” or “Be resurrected.” The world can conclude that arise means get up from your prostrate position, but the word, here on the road to Jerusalem, means arise to a new life.  

How do I know this? Because Luke will not let us, or the leper, go without spelling out exactly what has happened here.  Jesus tells the Samaritan to go on his way because his faith has saved him. The word is saved, not healed. (Though it can be translated either way, the context and other usage resists using "healed" except in soteriological terms.)

Where are the other nine? We can only conclude they did not have faith that Jesus is God; they failed to understand that God was present in his prophet Jesus. Only the foreigners, the Samaritan and Naaman understood that God had touched them. Luke might say scripture is being relived in the moment.

There is a three-fold significance to this leper’s conversion in faith. The Samaritan’s conversion itself is important because he understands God has been present in his healing. As I have said before, faith found the Samaritan.

There is another important part (warning?) of the story.  An observant Jew would hear the echo of Naaman’s healing in this story of the alien returning to Jesus.  The uncomfortable reminder to the listening scribes and Pharisees on this road to Jerusalem is that an outcast, a heretic, a despised person can experience God’s grace. 

The third part of the message is response guided by faith. The issue is not having faith in God’s work; but in what we do with our faith. We ought to worship and praise and go our way with renewed lives.

So I can sum up this story of the ten lepers. The first point is that no one can create gratitude where it is absent. Special status, such as being a Jew or a preacher does not confer gratitude. What confers gratitude is an inward disposition towards the understanding of grace. This is the fundamental character of faith: we have faith and are grateful because we understand the source of grace. As the Samaritan leper showed, faith is not found in a rational experience but by grace of God.
For the other nine, perhaps the absence of gratitude, or ingratitude, is a greater burden than leprosy itself.  Are these nine men worse off for their ingratitude after being healed? At the worst they have denied that God healed them and at best failed to SEE Jesus for who he is.

What does gratitude for God’s grace encumber?  Gratitude for God’s grace encumbers the obligation to worship and praise God as the source of grace. Praise in its original sense (note 1) means shouting “Hallelujah” for our gift of grace. And there is some evidence “Hallelujah” originally means a shout “Hurrah for Yahweh.”

And finally we get to the main point of faith. Faith incurs a demand for action, a point James will make directly in his letter. The issue is not having faith but in what we do with that faith in our daily lives.

If I tried to condense Luke’s message from Jesus to a single sentence it would be, “the mysteries of the Kingdom of God are best understood by those who hear the word of God and do it (Luke 8:21).’” (note 2)

note 1: see The Interpreter’s Bible, Volume VIII, Luke and John, Nashville: Abingdon Press. 1952. p 299.
note 2: See Holladay, C.R., A Critical Introduction to the New Testament,Nashville: Abingdon Press. 2005.  p179-180.

Day - 300 I'm Glad To Oblige

A Sermon given at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN Oct. 6, 2013

OT reading: Lamentations 3:18-26

NT Reading: Luke 17:5-10

How often have we done some good deed and in reply to a thank you said, “I’m glad to oblige?” It is an interesting statement because the word “oblige” has two almost different meanings. “Obliged” can mean “to be required to take an action by moral or legal force.” For example, “Congress is obliged by law to provide a budget for the government.”

“Obliged” can also mean to put someone into debt (an obligation) for some favor or action. For example, “I am obliged to you for your help.” so when we make the statement “I’m glad to oblige” it can mean I’m glad to put you under obligation for my action,” or “My duty requires me to under take an action.”

Today in Luke, Jesus is talking exactly about the connection of faith and obligation.

Let me add a little review. Recall we are following Luke’s account from Luke chapter 9 of Jesus traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem where he will be crucified. The reality of his impending death is real, Luke says his face is set on Jerusalem.  Jesus has spent his time on the journey chastising the Pharisees, cajoling and chastising his disciples and followers and the curious who are following him on this journey. Through out this whole journey he has talked mainly about faith and humility. He told the Pharisees only to invite the people they detest to their banquets and never to sit at the head of the table unless asked. He told his disciples that he would bring conflict between family members because unless they put their loyalty to him over all other worldly considerations they are not fully committed to follow him. He used the treatment of sick and disabled Lazarus, poor and disabled as the song goes, to condemn the Jewish religious leaders for having the law, knowing they could not fulfill it but denying Jesus anyway. As we near the end of his journey Jesus has turned his attention to his disciples again who have asked Jesus for more faith.

The lectionary passage leaves out the first 4 verses of this exchange (that I include in the like above) with the disciples and I think they may be useful to understand why the disciples ask for more faith in v5.

Jesus said,  (1)“Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come!  (2) It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble."

Jesus tells us we are always going to be faced with opportunities to do the wrong thing, to stumble. Someone will say something to us that we don’t like and we will get mad. Then we will either say something mean in return or do something we may regret later.  Jesus says woe to us when that happens because if we cause a weaker person to stumble we would be better off if instead we tied a millstone around our neck and leaped into the sea.

These are hard words. They do not give us a lot of comfort or wiggle room. We know those situations will come our way and Jesus says they are bad for us.

And then Jesus gives the disciples the command, “ (3) Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must talk about it to the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive.  (4) And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.” 

If you are wronged this way, take the person aside and let them know what they have done. If they repent, forgive them, and if they stumble and do it again and repent keep forgiving, even if it is seven times a day.

I don’t know about you but in my book this is a tall order. I have faith in God. I have faith that Jesus is Lord. I have faith that he defeated the death of sin by his resurrection and the road is open to me to enjoy his grace forever. But this teaching about forgiveness and millstones is really a hard pill to swallow.

Is the reaction of the disciples any wonder, “Increase our faith, PLEASE!” I would have been standing right behind them saying the same thing, “Increase my faith, too!”  In Mark’s parallel story of the father of the epileptic son. He tells the father if he has faith his son will be healed. The father replied, “I believe! Help my unbelief!” Jesus healed the son. The disciples had tried to heal the son but failed and appealed to Jesus. Jesus tells them it requires special power. 

This is our dilemma.  This man of clay, Jesus of Nazareth, Emmanuel, God is with Us, is going to demonstrate on the cross that human clay with absolute faith has this power. Jesus knows already our faith can never match his faith, why else is he here walking towards Jerusalem and the cross? This is the root cause for God’s sacrifice, the steadfast love and forgiveness of human clay. This is also Jeremiah's lament.

We have to appreciate what faith in God's steadfast love and forgiveness means. We’ve talked about it in the Easter story in Mark (16:1-8). Faith isn’t the feeling we have that the sun shall rise tomorrow and every morning hence. We know that by scientific observation. Faith isn’t the hope we might win the lottery. We know that is purely a matter of random probability. Hope and faith has nothing to do with it.

Faith is what came to Mary, Maratha and Salome in the tomb on the third day after the death of Jesus when the found the empty tomb open and a young man dressed in white saying, “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here. He is risen. Go tell the others he will meet them in Galilee.” The women struck with terror and amazement fled and told no one.”  I remind you that the Greek words tell us these three women were terrified and amazed because they knew they were in God’s presence receiving this message of resurrection and terrified of being able to fulfill the divine command, “go and tell the others.” They did not discover faith in the resurrection by some objective, scientific analysis. Faith came to them through the presence of the Holy Spirit. We use a messy word to describe the experience, a revelation. They knew they were in God’s presence. Their faith that found them in this empty tomb obliged them to action, and they were petrified.

This is how our faith comes to us human creations of God. We all have the same faith in the resurrection because the Holy Spirit brought it to us.  Faith is an equal thing, we have it or not, there is no degree of faith in the Good News.

So Jesus gives this lesson to the disciples about faith and the mustard seed. Perhaps again he used overstated language colored by his own knowledge of the death that awaits him in Jerusalem, and of his absolute faith in his resurrection.

The mustard plant or shrub is a very hearty plant. Its seeds  sprout readily and are scattered easily by birds. Like Kudzu here, it grows everywhere and is almost impossible to eliminate. There were even Jewish laws that forbid growing mustard plants in gardens for this reason. It is hard to escape the idea that here may be some theological analogy that the disciples will spread the Good News the way the mustard seed spreads the shrub wildly.

Jesus says, “If you had faith, true faith, you would be more powerful that a tiny seed that grows into a plant, you would be able to uproot trees and toss them in the sea, you would be able to move mountains (Matthew17:14-20. This passage in Matthew is his version of the event we discuss here.)

“But my beloved disciples, I know you are men of mortal clay. I have called you by faith to a Christian vocation, to follow me and learn the Good News, to discover how to go out and spread it throughout the countryside. I have called you to be my slaves.  The modern translations use the word “servant” not “slave,” but “servant” papers over the negative connotation of slavery, something Paul and the early church understood and willingly self identified as slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is important about the word “slave” is that it paints the picture of our relationship to the Lord. We do not have any say in our calling.

We are called to be a witness. The Lord isn’t going to let us go easily. We can resist that calling using all manner of excuses, “Let me go and bury my father first,” “let me close up my shop, beach my boat and put up my nets…”.

Jesus says faith is like the obligation of the slave to the master. Our vocation is an obligation to the Lord; thus, we are bound by the imperative of faith to understand our vocation as Christians and to serve the Lord. We cannot indebt ourselves to God by being faithful. This isn’t a “works of faith” game where we strive to be a more righteous to move up a place or two at the big banquet in heaven.

Listen to the last two verses, (17:9) ”Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?” Would you expect your boss to thank you just for doing what you are paid to do? Faithful action does what is expected, does what is the right thing to do, and atones or repents for our errors when we stumble. Yes, we are blessed for our faith but remember who we are, human clay.

Jesus explains his words in verse 10.  "So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves [merely servants]; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”  The translation, “We are worthless slaves” or “merely servants” is another example of the fundamental failure of all translation.  What this Greek says is something like this, “We have no reason to expect further reward than we already have because we did only what faith expected of us.” We are obliged by faith to follow the master’s bidding. Faith is its own reward.

Earlier we thought about the idea of the theological importance of the mustard seed analogy. Jesus says, “If you had faith, (my faith?), you would be more powerful that a tiny seed that grows like a weed and spreads everywhere, you would be able to uproot trees and toss them in the sea, you would be able to move mountains.” You do not need super faith to do what I require; you just need faith. Your faith will empower you to do your job, to spread the good News everywhere. This image dovetails to the mustard seed. The faith of the disciples will spread the Good News the way the mustard shrub spreads wildly.

That does not make our job easy. The bible is full of examples. We can read about Stephen in Acts or Paul in 2 Corinthians to see that. Faith is about doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. The right thing to do is almost always the very, very difficult thing to do. It is easy stumble, or cause someone else to stumble, so be prepared to atone or forgive, even if it requires you to do it seven, or seventy times seven times. It is logging out of Facebook or  the TFP e-version rather than reacting to something you read that you do not like before you say something that will hurt you later. It is really about how we approach people in general.

We real have a pretty good real life example of how this works. My fellow pastor, Stephanie Maddox-Hill reminded me of the comic strip “Peanuts.” The creator of the strip, Charles Schultz, used theological themes, and one exemplary event in the strip every fall football season was the interaction of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick. Every time he runs at the ball swinging his leg to kick it, she pulls the football away and Charlie falls down on his back.

Mr. Schultz to my recollection had Lucy apologize only once on a TV version; but every time Charlie Brown asked her she said she would hold the ball, and good old Charlie Brown forgave her and tried again, and again.

Many of us see Lucy as the stand in for a mean spirited woman. Others see Charlie Brown as a gullible fool. I think Charles Schultz intended show Charlie Brown’s faith was forgiving for someone who said they repented.

We never know if repentance is true, do we? We never know if it is an earnest plea for forgiveness that is too burdened with temptation forcing the other person to pull t he ball away.  I don’t want to carry the analogy too far because we all have to decide when someone is so incorrigible and unable to repent to be a danger to us.

We all have to understand the consequences of error in both cases, forgiveness or condemnation. Jesus and Paul offer advice about separating the fellowship from someone. Scripture says it is the gravest decision because we abandon a person to sin when we separate from them, yet we risk harm to the fellowship if we do not. The millstone always hangs there at the ready.

That is why the Presbyterian Church requires a difficult process for breaking fellowship with a member, a pastor or a congregation to reduce the chance the emotion and anger of a few do not unjustly rule the action of all. That never guarantees the right decision is reached but when we rely on a group of people to agree to who say they are commit to faithful action, it is the best we can get.

The bottom line is faith comes to us from the Holy Spirit. It is an obligation. It is an obligation to our covenant of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord to live as he lives.  To have faith is to be obliged to forgive, to cajole and correct, to help and to use the great power of the slave’s virtue, humility to serve the Lord. 

Day 293 - Precious Memories

A sermon given at the Darlington School, Rome, GA and the Urban Outrteach Ministry, Chattanooga, TN on September 29 and 30.

The sermon at Darlington School was a memorial service for students, graduates and staff who had died in the past year. The school has a wide breadth of nationalities and creeds, therefore I chose to emphasize in this sermon elements that are more ecumenical but still encompass the Christian message.

Old Testament Reading: Job 14:7-10, 14-22

New Testament reading: Mark 16:1-8

Today I would like us to think about our departed friends and family.  We would normally do this on All Saints Day, the day when some churches even read the names (necrology) of those who have passed away.

Presbyterians frown upon eulogies that only celebrate the historical life of a person as a loss, because there is life after death.  We call the funeral service the “Celebration of the life and witness” to the Resurrection of the person who has died.

If you do a little study you will find that almost every religious tradition believes in some form of resurrection and after life. Ancient Egyptian religion did, the three religions rooted in the life and faith of Abraham, Buddhism clearly do, and I could list more. Even wiccans have an explanation of what transpires beyond death.

Christian denominations and other religious traditions diverge on the challenges of getting there, and what happens next. However, except for the most hardened atheist, the question of life after death is very real.

Job's lament in our reading captures human anxiety about death in a very touching way.  You can find similar views in the Psalms and in Quoheleth (Ecclesiastes) and Proverbs, but Chapter 14 of Job captures the anxiety in a most heroic manner. I commend to you the entire chapter, or the whole book, and a visit to the library for some good commentaries to help you interpret it. There are some sections who translation is challenging.

Job has observed the fallen, dried out tree stump. Seemingly dead, after hard rain green shoots sprout from it in a display of newfound life. The metaphor is magnificent. It reminds me of a large Hackberry tree in my yard when i was remodeling my home. Though it was a good shade tree it was in the way of a new driveway. We cut it down and I dug out the stump but with every spring rain more and more new shoots appeared from its roots across the yard.

For Job, all his worldly experience of human death allowed him only to grieve and perhaps half-heartedly hope there may be life after death. He says, (10, 14a) “But mortals die, where are they? If mortals die, will they live again?”

Job's history is critical to his story and our story.  He was not a Hebrew, but had lived a fully righteous life, outdoing even the most righteous Hebrew. When his children traveled or had a party or dinner, Job prayed for their safety and wisdom.

Everything was going Job’s way until God and Satan made a little wager about the strength of Job’s faith. Then Job's life began a frightening and inexplicable slide towards his end.

Miseries befell him: all his children were killed; All his crops and animals were lost; He was afflicted with a terrible skin disease and could only sit on the ground and scrape the sores with a piece of broken pottery; his wife said, “Why don’t you just go ahead and die?”  Yes, Job had a serious worry about what happens after death. If he could live again, it seemed to Job that only death can end his present.

He concludes however that against all hope death is a finality that prevails against life itself (21,22): Their children come to honor the dead and the dead do not know it. The dead are brought low, and their children pass them by unnoticed. His conclusion is based on the fact that no one who has felt death's embrace has returned with news of the other side. Job story is one answer to the skeptic’s unanswerable question of what lies on the other side.

 (But what about Elijah (2 Kings 2) and Enoch, and the criminal on the cross??)

If we fast forward some hundreds of year to Roman-occupied Palestine,  our Christian tradition knows one person did return.  But even here questions loom in our Gospel stories of what happened.

A large majority of biblical scholars conclude Mark was the first written Gospel and from the earliest recovered manuscripts it is evident that it ends with our last verse (8), leaving us a magnificent heroic story with more questions than answers about death.

Mark does not begin with a choir of angels announcing the birth of Emmanuel, or Mary’s pregnancy as proof Jesus was born a man. Mark begins with a frightening mad man eating grasshoppers and wild honey who dressed in camel hair, lives and preaches in the desert wilderness, baptizing people in the Jordan River and proclaiming the coming of One who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. 

Suddenly a man from Nazareth called Jesus appears and is baptized to a heavenly proclamation that “You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” Immediately he is driven out into the same wilderness returning after forty days to a synagogue where he immediately begins preaching

a sermon lost to antiquity. We only know he cast out an unclean spirit  that exclaimed, “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

It ends with his death, deserted by everyone but the women who remained faithful to him in good times and bad, anointed his feet at great cost, cooked, offered him water, begged for unmerited mercy, and in the end, stood solitary sentries to his death.

Three days after his death the women went to the tomb with spices to anoint the body as their last gift.

To their surprise and fear, the tomb was open and a man dressed in white was inside saying,  “Do not be alarmed. (!) the man you seek has been raised. He is not here. Go and meet him in Galilee as he told you. The women fled in terror and amazement, telling no one for they were afraid.” That is the end of the Gospel of Mark, the crux of Christian Faith: some amazed women almost petrified by fear of this young man and his command.

It is an Easter story with no concrete evidence of the resurrection save the word of this young man who tells every one to go meet Jesus in Galilee. 

Neither The young man’s words or the absence of the body offer any proof of resurrection, any one could have stolen the body. The women made no rational, objective discovery of his fate, but the Greek texts indicate they felt a more sublime and subjective fear or revelation that they were in God’s presence hearing this message of the gift of resurrection and a daunting command, “Go tell the others.” 

Faithful Christians argue about what this resurrection means, sometimes in a most unchristian way. Are we swept up into heaven? Are we consigned to some temporary way station where we are refined to face God? Do we remain in some dark-state asleep waiting for the final appearance of the Kingdom of God and our resurrection? 

Our non-Christian friends may believe something entirely different about this afterlife, but…

I suggest to you all that regardless of our different beliefs, these two stories about Job and Jesus present to us an undeniable revelation about our future (your future) and the dead whose lives we acknowledge today.

We gather to celebrate the life of friends and family who have died. For many of us their memories are so real and painful they are heart wrenching. Some pray for the dead now as Job prayed for his children when they were alive. Others rejoice in their good fortune in life according to the promise in Mark.

We do not know where they are. We do not know if they hear and know us right now. Many of us expect one day to see them again but some remember Job's question.  "After mortals die and are laid low; where are they now?" Do we pass by their grave unnoticed? Job had no answer.  Mark doesn't give an answer. I cannot tell you. No one can.

What I can do is offer you this reflection. Mark's story of the Good News lives beyond the time of the women at the tomb. Christianity and the women's story has persisted and is found in every corner of the world today.

Job’s story survived the ages. We know the story of his love and dedication to God and his family. We know all about his cruel and inexplicable suffering. We hear his anger at God, and his questions to God that show he never doubted God was there. Job doubted only that he would live after death.

What I tell you is Job answered his own question, if not for himself, for us. Job has persisted across the ages in his story. We know Job, we hear and understand his doubts and complaints against our Maker. In that sense he is with us today.

At the very minimum we can say the same about Jesus, the women who tended to him and his followers and Job.

They have persisted across the ages in an oral and written tradition palpably real to believers. They offer moral and ethical lessons for everyone living today. Some lessons are challenging, some people do not accept them. But undeniably these people live today in their history even for the skeptics.

You realize these stories pose a question and a challenge... “What will the future say of us?”

I propose to you all that the history of those we remember today challenge and caution us to build our own history.

That future history will be the measure of us.

When we are young, the passion of life burns in our veins. Only the wise young person gauges their hope of life against the span of our years amid that passion. We are preoccupied by a comely acquaintance, money or friends. It all flows through our fingers until only a cool spirit lingers.

As we near that final divide when our years are closer to that theoretical 120 than our birth, the question of what lies beyond the grave takes on a certain clarity. Job's worry is perennial, it never goes away.

Worry overtakes us; perhaps we develop an acute fear, or maybe just curiosity of what lies beyond the grave. 

Grandparents will not live to know the third generation of grandchildren and beyond, but those grandchildren will know their grandparents by the deeds of  history, by story passed on and received.

These friends we remember today who have passed on are precious memories. They are a present reality of hope, comfort, motivation, error and knowledge for us.

They shape us for how we shall deal with the good and the bad.

The way to ensure we answer Job's question in the affirmative is to leave a good mark for the future to use as the true measure of our lives.

I'll close with a poem I wrote a couple years ago about this very subject.

For A Little While - Precious Memories

I had a father for just a little while.

He was here long enough to feel his smile;

He was here long enough to live and learn

so much about life and to feel love and pain.

His were old memories burnt into the synapses of his brain.

I imagine them to be the seashore sun that blonds hair

and bronzes the skin to dark cracked leather

on those who tarry on the shore, season after season.

Yes, our time together seemed long enough,

Irrationally I thought it would never end.

There would always be time enough for the questions.

The ones that come upon us unaware, 

the real questions that we hold for so long.

I was so convinced, so headstrong to think

I'll understand and not have to ask how he managed his.

They are the same questions I have, you see.

The questions about pain, love and life,

About finding…no, about holding faith when things go so wrong,

about hanging on when they go so right I'm liable to walk away

forgetting the dreams anon.

I am left with no solace to comfort me save my lament.

Why, oh why did I let him leave with his dreams;

What were the dreams; those fulfilled and even those unanswered? 

Why did time leave me searching this way now,

hoping a part of him remains in me with the same dreams?

Time has left me with precious memories of the living past.

As dusk nears I find he is living within my own memory

as I fathom the future and the chimera of dreams for answers

to questions he too had wondered and  left unvoiced.

copyright Henry Paris 2013