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From
April 30, 2006 Been there, done that. If you haven't ever used that phrase, certainly you've heard it. It's a popular way to say we've moved on from something. Maybe that something taught us a lesson. Maybe it gave us some new perspective. Maybe it even changed us. Whatever it was, however it touched us, to say "been there, done that" means that experience now rests securely in the past. For the Hopi people of northern Arizona, there's really no such thing as "been there, done that." You see the Hopi don't separate past from present like we do. For them, what happened before is happening still in a kind of "ever-present now" that is difficult for you and me to fully appreciate. Like the guitar string that gives off sound long after it has been strummed, to the Hopi way of thinking the past continues to be alive well into the now and even on into whatever comes next. For us calendar keepers, for all who believe in clear divisions between past, present, and future, Easter was two long weeks ago. We've been there and done that. Our aisle candles have been taken down and put away. The chancel has been returned to its pre-Easter state. We're not looking backward but ahead--to next Sunday's Community Kitchen, our Mother's Day Cake Auction the Sunday after, and a dozen other wonderful things. And yet even as you and I have moved on from Easter in a practical sense, spiritually speaking it is still very much resurrection day. If we were traditional Hopis, we would feel the reality of the opened-up emptied-out tomb as incredibly present to us. Still resonating would be the return of our crucified Lord. So as we consider together today's lesson, perhaps something of that first day of Christ's new life can rise up and take hold in us, every bit as alive now as then. Despite all that makes our Easter stories different, a common thread runs among them: when the risen Christ appears, no one recognizes him. At dawn Mary Magdelene doesn't know that it's Christ she's speaking to. Same thing later in the day: Cleopas and his companion don't have the faintest idea who the kindly stranger is journeying with them back to Emmaus. As was the case in John's Gospel last week, even by nightfall no one has a clue--not even the ones who knew Jesus best. The peaceful presence that comes among them? Not one disciple recognizes him as their beloved and restored-to-life Teacher and Savior. Instead, terror has them all presume they are being visited by a ghost. Fear is nothing if not potent. Its primal power triggers an instinct that drives us in one of two directions: we rush to flee or we rush to fight. A drive that owes its life to the workings a certain part of our brains, the part that is, developmentally speaking, the oldest and most primitive. This is not the part of the brain that composes sonatas or seeks a cure for cancer. This is not the part of the brain that is moved to compassion nor is it even capable of balancing the checkbook. The part of us that registers threat and responds with fear is the same part that works overtime to make sure that no matter what, there's an "us" still standing at the end of the day. When activated, this part of us believes we're still living in prehistoric times and so gives us the same jolt of go-juice that it gave to our cave-dwelling ancestors. As helpful as fear is, and it is helpful--it is what helps keep us alive - it comes with considerable liabilities. And one of those liabilities is that when fear's floodgates are open, the resources of the wiser parts of the self are cut off. Here's an example from my own life. Driving through
the high country of northern Arizona one night, an elk
leapt down off the moonlit mountainside and ran headlong
into my speeding truck. To say I was filled with terror
is an understatement. Never mind that I was wearing black and so was hard--if not impossible--to detect there on the roadside. Never mind that I could have easily gone the same way as the elk. Terror had overtaken me and this is the solution my fear-soaked mind came up with. Recognizing my inability to think clearly, the first thing my rescuer did was to have me lock myself inside my truck while he stood outside and calmly called the highway patrol, and waited for help to arrive. Not only does it cut off access to important inner resources, fear can also convince us of things that aren't necessarily so. After being glued to my Colorado television set the day Columbine High School had its hell, I stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Just as I did, a sullen teen-ager in a black trench coat came striding past me on the sidewalk. Now even though I was living on the other side of the Rockies, my fear convinced me--in a flash that felt like forever--that this young man was one of Columbine's killers. Two tales of fear's tremendous downside. I know you have your own stories to tell of how and when fear got the better of you. Of times when terror tricked you into believing wrongly about a person or a whole group of people. A time when fears that felt more real than real inspired a decision you later came to regret. Last week in John and now again in Luke, I am taken by Jesus' priority when he returns and finds terrified disciples. Before anything, he gives them his peace. His peace to calm the wild waters of their fear and trembling. Peace to sooth the savage beast inside each man's frightened breast. And then to add oomph to his words, Jesus takes a position of utter vulnerability, the same one my parents taught me to assume when a neighbor dog felt threatened, Jesus stands still and simply holds out his hands. That way the disciples can circle around him, inspecting and sniffing and realizing that this presence is indeed a safe one. In this way Jesus quiets their addled brains and slows
their galloping hearts. Fear cheats us of the big lives we were born to live. It keeps us right where it kept the disciples, locked behind doors breathing stale air and holding fast to nothing that lasts. In Luke, see how perfectly Jesus understands captivity to fear. Before anything, he blesses with peace. Indeed by the way he holds himself he holds his peace out to them, and only afterwards, after the disciples have received this essential gift, does Jesus enlist their intellects and their imaginations. Only after they have moved from fear to peace does Jesus open the disciples' minds to understand the scriptures, to comprehend how God has managed to weave together past, present, and future in the most saving of ways in Jesus and through him and with him. An understanding that, then as now, means to find its home not only in the mind but indeed in our very lives. I remember being deeply moved by this story someone shared with me about her mother. You see, her mother had a life-long fear of being buried alive. Irrational as it was, the woman was gripped with terror that she would appear to have died, and because of this mistake, then placed in a coffin, lowered down, and covered over with the heavy weight of earth while she was unable to do anything to save herself. "It makes sense, though," the daughter said plainly. "It makes sense my mother would have a fear like this. All her life she was afraid to live. While she lived, it was as if she were really dead." Don't misunderstand me. Not every fear is irrational. Personal safety expert Gavin Debeker says that we have been blessed with an instinct that recognizes when we are truly at risk and that it is important to honor the fear signal it sends. Indeed, honoring and then acting on that fear could save our very lives. Mostly, though, the fears that grip us are ones that come trying to convince us they have substance, when really they are shadowed ghosts, playing tricks on the eyes of our hearts, as happened for the disciples that lamp-lit night their newly resurrected Jesus came to give them their lives back. Fear? We've been there. We've done that. Humans that we are, probably we'll be there again and do that again. But standing with us whenever fear surrounds us is the one who lived and loved fearlessly. Who lives and loves fearlessly still. Standing with us, opening us to something bigger and more real than fear, is the one who stepped out of his tomb and back into life again. Even if you can't quite see him, he's here now and holding himself out to you just as surely as he did in the low light of the disciples' locked-tight room. You know who he is, he's the only one who can say of the cross and the tomb: been there, done that--and now let's get back to really living. Amen. © Rev. Karen Winkel |
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen
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