Month: April 2021

Every year when the Good Shepherd Sunday rolls around I remember my first years in ministry.  The organist at that church was also a good shepherd.  He would do the children’s sermon on those Sundays, sometimes bringing a real live little lamb in as a prop.  Thirty years ago, our young families spent a great deal of time together; we were best friends.  You know how it is when you just “click” with someone.  We spent lots of time together.  My husband helped them with lambing and haying.  I never thought we would ever lose touch with each other.  Yet, it happened.

At Christmas time this year I received a newsy, hand-written greeting from that old friend, filling me in on all the years since we had been in contact.  They quit farming many years ago and he became a music teacher, his wife a nurse.  I wrote back filling them in on all the changes in my life over the years.  There is something wonderful about old-fashioned letters; they connect us in a tangible way. We have since connected virtually through Facebook too and that has been good too.  Nothing new can break the bind of true friendship.  It is a gift from God.

Today’s lessons are about the love of the Good Shepherd for us, about being known and abiding in love.  One of the lessons is 1 John 3:16–24:

16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17 How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

18 Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 19 And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20 whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; 22 and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

23 And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

In the gospel lesson for today Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd who lives in union with the sheep and with the Father who sent him. He zeroes in on the idea of knowing and being known. 

John 10: 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. 

Later in the same gospel Jesus says:

John 15:15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

I think that last passage about being called friends by Christ is one of the best images for what it means to be “in Christ.”  We are the friends of Christ.  Wow!  Think about that for a minute.  Who are your best friends?  What do they mean to you?  What do you mean to them?  What would life be like without best friends? 

So much of what makes friendship important is simply spending time together.  I’m reminding of a song from the 70’s by Michael Johnson. You can listen to it by clicking this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJHe6pXix1w

The lyrics go like this:

I’ve troubled for you from time to time
That’s why nothing new can break the bind
It’s the time you waste for them
That makes a friend a friend
Unique in all the world until the end

We’ve traveled for years through mindless miles
And shared us some tears through aimless trials
And though you’re old and worn
You’re the only home I’ve known
Through memories stretched beyond so many dawns

I find it hard to believe that time brings change
Now all of my friends are broken with age
But what’s essential you cannot see
I’m responsible for my friends and they for me

I’ve troubled for you from time to time
That’s why nothing new can break the bind
It’s the time you waste for them
That makes a friend a friend
Unique in all the world until the end.

This past year has physically separated us from so many of our friends and loved ones and forced us to connect in new ways.  Steve and I are fully vaccinated now and past the two-week waiting period.  We travelled to Arizona to spend time with my parents.  I am writing this from their patio right now.  How amazing it is to be together again, to play Bridge together, to hug and breathe the same air! 

How wonderful it will be when we can gather in worship together again, to sing and pray and share together.  Until then may we make the most of our time, find new ways to reach out and care for one another as friends in Christ.  Amen

I’ve adopted a saying from the United Church of Christ in the ritual welcome to the Lord’s table that I offer whenever I preside at Holy Communion.

I say, “No matter who you are or where you are on faith’s journey, you are welcome at this table and in the community of faith!”

Faith is a journey and there are times when that journey leads us into a place of deep questions as it did for the disciple Thomas just a week after Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance to the women and the rest of the disciples. The faith journey of Thomas may have been stuck in grief or fear. He had been absent for the first appearance of Christ. Maybe he needed some time alone to process the events of the past week. We don’t know where he was, just that he missed out.

Over 20 years ago I was sitting with a family at a mortuary, planning the funeral for their son who had been killed in an accident. The parents were close friends of mine and members of the congregation I served. The funeral director said something to all of us that made a deep impression on me. He urged the family to be gentle, loving, and understanding with each other, telling them that grief is a process that moves at individualized rates. It’s like riding an elevator. Some of you may have to stay at first floor longer than others. Another may move through the stages quicker than others. Remember that it’s ok for each one of you to be where you are. It takes time. One day you may think you’ve reached the next floor, and the next day find yourself in the basement again. It’s ok. “No matter who you are or where you are on faith’s journey, you are welcome in the community of faith and at the Lord’s Table.”

That was true for the disciple Thomas, too. Although we don’t know the whole story, what we see in the gospel is that the community of faith welcomed him back, doubts and all. Wherever he had gone to grieve, to be alone, to process in his own way, when he returned he was allowed to question. It was there, in the safety of a welcoming community that he got the answers he needed to move along.

This year we’ve had to find new ways of creating and maintaining Christian Community. I created a Facebook group for members of the Blue Church in Mazatlan. My son created a weekly family Zoom call that has been a real blessing. We’ve made use of the phone and email more than ever.

Yesterday I got a phone call from a friend in Mazatlan who wanted to make sure I knew that a mutual friend’s mother had died of Covid this week. My husband and I already knew that as our mutual friend had reached out to us for prayer support earlier in the week. Yet, the phone call was another reminder that Christian Community is such an important part of who we are. We need each other and the open arms of the church can comfort us, or challenge us, or offer us an opportunity to learn, serve and grow.

So, if you’re in a good place right now I encourage you to reach out to someone whose elevator car might be stuck in the basement, whose journey of faith has led them into a place of isolation, fear, grief, or loneliness. Be gentle, loving and understanding. Share the good news that God’s love enfolds us all, all the time.

Stripped-Down Easter; 2021; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson;

The women who brought their spices to the tomb at daybreak were the same women who stayed at the cross until the very end. We can imagine their grief and exhaustion. They were preoccupied with a very practical matter, would roll away the big heavy stone for them.  They went to anoint the body.  It was a practice done, actually, to aid in the decay process. The spices were to help with the smell, but also to accelerate the decomposition. Bodies would lie in the tomb for a year and then the family would go and collect the bones and put them in a box, called an ossuary, that would be stored in a different section of the tomb. So, when Joseph of Arimathea loaned his family’s tomb to the family of Jesus, it was only supposed to be temporary. But little did he know how temporary it would be.

The women encountered a situation beyond anything they could have expected. The stone wasn’t their problem.  Jesus, who had been crucified, was risen and was not there.  They fled, in terror, and amazement. 

It is strangely fitting that we have this stripped-down Easter gospel in this stripped-down year.  Mark didn’t add any extras to his account like Matthew, Luke or John did.  No, there are no post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in this ending of the gospel. The silence of the women reverberates like an unresolved chord, jangling like an unanswered question? 

The opening of Mark’s gospel is likewise stripped-down. There is no a birth narrative or even a genealogy. Instead, Mark immediately plunges midstream into Jesus’ life with his baptism by John.  Throughout his bare 16 chapters, Mark presents disciples who blunder along, continually misunderstanding Jesus.  Mark’s sentences are short and tight. It is a no-frills masterpiece of writing.  The whole of the gospel can be seen as a sort of parable that asks an open-ended question:  will we flee in terror and amazement too?  Will we fail to grasp the mystery of Jesus like the women and the disciples did? 

This whole year has been stripped-down.  We have lived with the limits of the pandemic and Easter is no exception.  This service, like so much this year, is limited.  There is no resounding response of “He is risen Indeed!” in this sanctuary today to my “Christ is Risen!”  You can’t smell the strong scent of Easter lilies over the internet. There will be no large family gathering around feast-laden tables today.  There have been no easter egg hunts, no festival Easter brunch.  We have not been able to stand, jam-packed into the sanctuary, to raise the rafters with the strains of “Jesus Christ is Risen Today!” 

This strange year is giving us an opportunity —to focus our attention not on all the extras since they’re not available to us this year anyway, but to focus on the main subject, the concise gospel that Jesus is risen and goes ahead of us.  All the extras are just the background, not the essentials, after all.  Easter isn’t about eggs, or peeps or tulips, or lilies, or music or even ham dinners with family.  The focal point is Jesus, risen and leading us forward, transformed.

I’m a novice painter.  When we spend our winters in Mexico, I take weekly oil painting lessons. This year I’ve been learning to paint with watercolor by taking online courses and reading books on my own.  Last week I read a book about color theory and the big impact a background can make for the subject of a painting. The color of the background actually changes the way we see the main subject. The greater the contrast the more the main subject or focal point of a composition will show up. 

The mystery and power of the resurrection stands in stark contrast this year, against a background of 2.7 million people lost to covid worldwide.  Our central focus today on the empty tomb shows up with a different tone when placed against a backdrop of two more mass shootings, chaos at the Border, unemployment and food insecurity.  We turn our attention to the resurrection today and our view is changed by the context of pandemic-induced loneliness, anxiety and depression.  The bright light of Easter stands out against the dim and uncertain character of these times. 

The women came to the tomb at the crack of dawn after the resurrection had happened—in the dark of night, in secret, unseen.  They didn’t actually see him rise, they saw the empty tomb.  All the accounts of the resurrection agree that the most important event in history happened in total darkness.  Before the sun rose on that Sunday morning two thousand years ago, a great mystery took place in secret.  No sunlight illuminated the event.  No human being witnessed it.   And ever since, even now, no human narrative can contain it.  We can’t define it any more than the women could. It is a mystery known only to God.  The resurrection claims us and compels us even as it rests in holy darkness, shielded from our eyes. God was able to bring life out of death.  Out of the dark night, from the heart of loss and misery, God brought salvation.

It was incomprehensible to them.  Of course it was!  They needed the reassurance they got:  Do not be alarmed.  They came to prepare a body for decomposition, but there was no body. They were given a new task- to go and tell.  Yes, they fled in fear, but obviously they got over that and they did tell the others-or we wouldn’t know about it.  The mystery of resurrection had to soak in and resonate with them, as it does with us too.

Yes, we miss the traditions of Easter this year, the extras. But maybe it can be even easier to focus on the key point without the clutter of peeps and easter bonnets and baskets. When it’s all stripped down, we are left with trusting the story itself to do its work.

Resurrection doesn’t need lilies and rousing choruses of Alleluia sung by the faithful.  Easter doesn’t depend on the religious performance or the spiritual stamina of flailing human beings.  It doesn’t really matter if the women were frightened and silent at first.  The tomb is empty.  Death can not hold him, or us.  Jesus lives.  Period.  We are not in charge of Easter; God is.

We know from history that the fear those three women felt subsided, the found their nerve, and the went and told the others.  Together, following the risen Christ they chose hope. As they made the story their own it spread and grew.  Joy came.  Faith came.  Peace came.  Love came.  The glorious truth of a conquered grave and a risen Messiah made its way from their emboldened lips to every corner of the world.  The story didn’t depend on them.  But it changed them, and as they changed, the world around them changed, too.

Each year we come to the tomb and like the women, we grow in understanding as we follow Christ who goes ahead of us.  This year, against the background of death, with a future that feels uncertain, we need this word of life.  The good news of Resurrection is just what we need to hear right now.  So hold on to it, let it change you.  You don’t have to be able to take in all of its goodness right away; it is trustworthy, and it will wait for you.

But when you can, as you can, hear it again: “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell that he is going ahead of you.  You will see him, just as he told you.”

Christ is risen, the grave is empty, love is eternal, and death’s defeat is sure.  Whether or not you can bear this great truth right now isn’t the important thing.  Christ has given this truth to you.  It is yours.  He is risen, Alleluia!