Archbishop Elias Chacour of the Melkite Catholic Church in the Holy Land began his ministry in a small Galilean Arab village called Ibillin.  There he built a series of schools, beginning with an elementary school and now going all the way to a college.  He's committed his schools to the challenging balance between the pursuit of justice for the poor and politically oppressed and lasting reconciliation between enemies.  He believes one is not possible without the other, and he believes that's true in all cases and in every land. 

In the summer of 1982 I had a chance to throw some dirt around the shell of the then only anticipated Mar Elias High School in that little village—pretending to help, but mostly taking it all in and asking questions. In the evening, the small group I was with had the chance to sit on the roof of the then village priest's residence. We sat with him, on a dark but special night. It was the feast of his namesake, the prophet Elijah. It was also the middle of Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Our conversation was punctuated by the sound of warplanes overhead, on their way north. It was a chilling sound, and led our host to a genuine despair. What good were his efforts?  What value was the work? What hope was there for these peoples he tried to serve? 

During our discussion, one of the nuns came running up the stairs as if there was a great emergency.  She called to the priest and motioned him to the edge of the roof.  We joined him. There, over the valley between the residence and the shell of a school, we could see where the children who dreamed of that school for their future had put luminaria (those candles in sand in paper bags) in each of the rooms on each of the floors. There was also a row on the ground in front—all in perfect view of their spiritual father's (their "Abuna's") residence on this feast day for his patron saint. It was a surprise.

"Perhaps there is hope," he said through tears. "We must continue building for peace."  

Fourteen years later, in 2006, now an Archbishop, Elias wrote the same thought in a pastoral letter to his supporters around the world. He used more metaphor and waxed theological, but the message was the same. It seemed to resonate in the world we still live in. He wrote this:

No matter what, or rather because of what surrounds us, we do believe that the whispers of the Crucified One are stronger than the bombs of the war lords. 

They cannot be left alone to make history. God is also at work to form history. 

While violence and explosions destroy, humility and love make roots deep in the hearts of men and women of good will.[i]

I write while the bombs at the Boston Marathon are still echoing.  I write while some are still unpacking a story of chemical weapons used in Syria. I write when peace is still elusive between Palestinians and Israel, and suffering continues. I write in a still hostile and troubled world, with violence in homes as well as in streets. 

I also write with the word from the nun beckoning us to the edge of the roof still echoing too. I write in a world of beauty, love, and spiritual discipline—where peace is still made and the whispers of the Crucified One still vibrate our certainties and beg our attention.  A candle in sand in a paper bag shining a light that no darkness can put out.

 

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[i] Annual letter [2006], Office of His Excellency Archbishop Chacour and the Mar Elias Educational Institutions, PO Box 102, Ibillin 30012, Galilee, Israel

It's the week after Easter, 2013.  My sermon this year was based on one I preached a few years ago, with some changes.  This year, it was about 2400 words.  Just to see what radical brevity looks like, I've reduced it to about 600 here.  Here it is, one fourth the size!

~     ~     ~

Easter Ahead of Us

Christ's Resurrection is ahead of despair. It's ahead of power.  It's ahead of doubt.

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Despair

Matthew tells us that the angel perched on top of the stone he'd rolled away from the tomb, with great satisfaction.  There’s no death here,' he said.

The angel’s light filled the still grey dawn before daylight arrived, and put things into a whole new perspective. There was no death there.

Easter tells us that the future is not Godless.  It can't be, because Jesus has been raised from the dead and has gone off ahead of us.  Little wonder the first words we hear from the angel are, “Do not be afraid.”

~ ~ ~

Power

The guards were so confident in the power of the Empire, until the earth moved and the stone was rolled away under their watch. Their bullying turned to confusion. Some of them fled. Some of them ran to their bosses. Not one of them turned listened to the angel or talked to the two Marys. 

Not only were the physical and spiritual powers of death too weak to hold Jesus, the political and religious powers couldn’t hold him either.

The message of an angel can change the world. 

~ ~ ~

Doubt

The women return to tell them what they’ve seen. They tell them that both the angel and the Risen Christ want them to go up to Galilee where they began their work with Jesus.  Jesus will be waiting for them.

They arrive, see Jesus, and worship him.  And one of the most telling phrases comes there:   “but some doubted" (Matt. 28: 17).

Even we who doubt. . . . Easter comes for us too, ready to accept our questions, ready to let our doubt be, and ready to woo us by a gentler grace than absolute proof.

The Easter story is not an easy story.  It would be foolish to pretend it is. We bring faith to it and we also bring questions—not just about its history, but also about what it might mean for us and how ready we are to let it really effect us.  Our doubts should be every bit as much a part of Easter as our faith.  God meets us in both.

~      ~      ~

One of my strongest childhood memories is of being awakened every Easter morning, before dawn, by my father. The world still dark and chilled, a voice coming from somewhere in my slumber bidding me into the wakefulness, a feeling like no feeling felt on any ordinary day.

Earlier than I knew the world even existed.

Earlier than I knew how things were supposed to go.

Earlier than life itself, it seemed.

He would not shake me or speak my name.  He would simply speak into my sleeping ears the good news of that day.

“Christ is Risen,” he’d say, until I awoke. I never knew how many times he’d said it before the one that awakened me. I only remembered the one that woke me up.

And as I grew I learned the response:  “Christ is risen indeed,” I’d mumble while coming to awareness.

“Halleluiah,” he’d whisper back.

I wonder if I ever received any better Christian education than that.  

While the world is dark and still chilled, news comes that awakens us from the slumber of despair, or from the dreams of power, or from the distraction of doubt and fear.

Christ is risen.

         He is risen indeed.

                           Halleluiah.

Freedom. There's a lot of talk around today about freedom. What do you and I have rights to? What are reasonable limits to absolute release from any constraints—what we call "license”. When are we no longer "free" if the power to do anything we want in a moment is limited? But then, at what point does license end up imploding, allowing a kind of free "war of all against all" until no one is free except the most powerful, most forceful, and most mighty? How does freedom interact with vulnerability, stewardship, service, mutual submission? How do we hold the tension between freedom and surrender, or obedience, or sacrifice for another in the different parts of our lives—in marriage, in family, at work, in church?

Christian faith has never equated freedom with release from constraint. It just hasn't. It’s equated freedom with power, given by God, to live vulnerably, acknowledge our fragility, and accept our responsibility. Freedom and responsibility are intertwined in Christian thinking. The extent to which we lose that connection we lose any credible Christian way to think and talk about freedom.

To whom outside ourselves are we responsible? What conditions of life, society, church, and such are needed to allow us to meet those responsibilities? What freedoms do we claim, as a right, to allow us to be responsible people? What freedoms do we build, by building just and fair institutions that allow people to become responsible citizens? What freedoms do we give, by forgiving, waiting, encouraging, and letting others take responsibility in their own lives in their own imperfect ways? How free are we to freely limit our own freedom, so we can be more than isolated and self-interested?

Christians find freedom in Christ, we say. And we say this not because being a Christian allows us to demand license or permission or liberty from others. We say this because in prayer, with other believers, and through embracing a faith-filled view of life we can find courage to give up some claims to personal liberty in order to accept the claims on us that responsible living brings. And that's real, happy, life-giving freedom.

The next time someone says to you, "That's a threat to my freedom!" ask them what they mean by that. Ask them to wonder with you what they're responsible to and for, and how they can find freedom in being responsible. And wonder about it yourself, if you dare.

And when what's outside is more powerful than you like, limiting your possibilities, can you find freedom to choose freedom still? Can you be free inside, in your spirit, to stay connected and responsible to God—and so to Love—even in your weakness? Of course you can. It's not always easy. But neither is slavery. God gave us a freedom that can't be sequestered. And that's the freedom we should claim. Don't you think?

For freedom we were made, so that we might in fact be whole, connected, responsible, and so truly free! Even liberated. Even when we feel weak.

In my third grade Sunday School class, back around 1966 or 7, we colored a big wheel of a paper calendar drawn as a sundial with the different colors of the church year—green, white, red, purple.  (Blue wasn't being used for the weeks before Christmas yet.)  We learned when Advent falls (four weeks before Christmas), that Christmas is actually two weeks long (12 days from Christmas to Epiphany), that Lent is 40 days (excluding Sundays), about Ordinary time and where to look on the calendar to find various liturgical "feasts" like Pentecost, Easter, All Saints Day (Reformation Sunday for the more Protestant among us), or Super Bowl Sunday (okay, not Super Bowl Sunday).  I'm sure that it was a noble, if silly, attempt to enculturate us into the church--to understand its rhythms, appreciate changes through the year, and know that what happens in church shapes how we make life.  I was proud that I knew what Whitsuntide was (though the season of Whitsuntide was abandoned by the wider church a few years later).  It felt like secret knowledge in a world getting more and more secular.  But how much it inculcated a living faith, I'm not really sure.  I don't want to rule it out, but at the same time I certainly don't want to confuse my crayola covered liturgical sundial with profound Christian education. 

And today it's even harder.  For as much as it was already beginning then, it was not long before lingering cultural vestiges of religious rhythm were either let go or absorbed into a stronger commercial rhythm.  Advent is a shopping season, still referencing Christmas but exhibiting little of what Advent has been in Christian history.  Blue laws are gone, and even a temporarily negotiated settlement to leave Sunday mornings free for Christians to worship has pretty much disappeared.  I doubt many school cafeterias accommodate students of Roman Catholic or other ecclesial communities who might fast from meat other than fish on Lenten Fridays.  Stephen Colbert will have ashes on his forehead for his show tonight, observant Catholic that he is on Ash Wednesday, but for many his ashes will be taken to be dry humor rather than the unremarkable expression of identity it probably is for the comedian himself.  I remember seeing a calendar on MTV some years ago, with graphics marking various days.  On Ash Wednesday one saw an animation coming off the calendar of a haggard old person with a cigarette, coughing and letting the ashes drop from the end onto her clothes:  "Ash Wednesday" it said.  It was treated like a fleeting cultural memory to be used for effect, not the marker of a rhythm of life to respect. 

And so it's Ash Wednesday as I write this.  It's the beginning of what many Christians call Lent, which is (quoting my third grade discovery) the 40 days, minus Sundays, before Easter.  It's meant to be a time of quiet, of self-reflection and confession of failing, of renunciation and sacrifice in hopes of receiving greater clarity on life and truer abundance, of family and church and learning.  It's meant to be a long breathing in to anticipate the great breathing out of Eastertime. 

Leaves me wondering how to enculturate a third grader into all of that today?  Crayons and construction paper weren't great in 1966, but they would seem actually counterproductive in 2013.  Maybe it takes living sundials today—folks who know what time it is in living life and who can teach Lent not by wearing purple on Sundays but by demonstrating in hard and worthy ways how self-reflection, apology and reconciliation, sacrifice for a greater good, fasting from over stimulation (of food, of technology, of activity, of accumulation, of distraction) can help us receive new focus and new clarity.  Maybe we need to talk about it all more, tell our stories more, share our struggles more, and admit together that it's not easy to live the rhythms of a Christian life in the world we're creating. 

Maybe our third graders simply need to hear us admit it, and to say to them even as we say to each other that we wish we could live otherwise than how we do. 

That'll be a start.  A good way to enter Lent.