At Arlington National Cemetery is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It is guarded at all times as a sign of respect. I understand it is a great honor to be one of the soldiers who guard it.

Our gospel tells us that guards were placed at Jesus’ tomb, but I doubt they considered it much of an honor. Probably it was more of a joke. Here they are great Roman soldiers from the most powerful army on earth, and they are guarding the tomb of a recently died rabble rouser. At least from their perspective that’s what Jesus was. And why bother guarding it? The guy’s disciples had fled. None of them so much as risked their eyebrows to stand up for their leader. They were just a bunch of cowards.

Perhaps the soldiers considered this assignment a cake job – guarding a tomb in a cemetery. What could happen? Perhaps they considered it embarrassing. The other guys in the cohort would be bragging about what they had done that day – how they had helped put down a near riot, or beaten up some Jews, or all sorts of other things soldiers would do that you don’t want me to talk about on in an Easter sermon. All the guys at Jesus tomb could say was that they watched the grass grow 1/8 of an inch taller!

Were they ever in for a surprise: earthquakes, angles, and empty tombs! The Gospel of Matthew presents the whole Easter story in a surprising, almost comic way.

Two Jewish women, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary – probably Jesus’ mother, come to the tomb at early dawn. There’s a great earthquake and an angel comes down, rolls back the stone and sits on it. His appearance is like lightning and his clothing is white as snow.

Now, how are those big burly Roman guards doing? These guys represent the might of the great Roman Empire, the greatest power on earth. These guys have seen battle. They are hardened killers. They’re true tough guys. They know how to keep their fear in check and keep on fighting. How are they doing against one solitary angel who’s now placidly sitting on a rock?

They certainly aren’t going to tell their commanding officer how well they did! For fear they’re shaking and becoming like dead men. I suppose if they’re going to be frightened to death they’re in a good place; by a tomb and all. And yet the truly dead guy they’re supposed to be guarding has been resurrected and isn’t there! Worse yet, these two Jewish women are a bit scared, yes, but not frozen in fear. Talk about being embarrassed as a soldier! Failing while on duty, being overpowered by two women and an unarmed angel who’s sitting on a rock.

We’ll come back to the story in a minute, but we have to note something else here. This is a story about power. We see already that the great power of the Roman Empire is nothing but a joke compared to God. And you know the story well. Even the power of death is no match for God. Jesus was raised!

I know that in our scientifically critical age the story of the resurrection is a bit of a stretch. Oh, I’m sure we can set aside our critical thinking to come into church on Easter Sunday and hear the almost fairy-tale like story of the resurrection with vivid imagination. And if I preach on it well enough you might get the same pleasure that you get from watching a fairy tale animated by Disney. It is a dream world where the good guys win and everyone lives happily ever after – except, of course, the bad guys who get what’s coming to them.

But then you leave here. The happiness may continue through Easter dinner, and if I tell a good enough joke in the sermon you might even repeat it then. But pretty soon it is like leaving the movie theater. You’re confronted with reality again and you have to leave the fantasy world behind. The resurrection is easy to believe in childlike innocence. It is much harder to believe when it has to work in the adult world of reality.

There is no scientific proof I can offer for the resurrection. It cannot be proven. The four accounts of the resurrection in the Bible do stand up to critical literary study. That is, when you study the stories not from the Christian perspective of faith, but just take them as stories from the ancient world, you do come away with the conclusion that they are based on historical truth. These are not fairy tales or fabrications of the first century. But that is still not proof.

While there is strong evidence to suggest the historic truth of Jesus resurrection it is still a matter of faith. Do you live its truth or not? Do you take the fairy tale like story of the world in here and make it the reality that you will live at work tomorrow? That is the real question of how true it is to you.

Here’s the truth of the matter. On Good Friday the fullness of God in Christ was humiliatingly crucified at the hands of humans. God paid the ultimate price to have you. No one can ever pay a higher price because God the Creator, your Creator, has paid a higher price than anyone or anything else ever can. God given the wholeness of himself to you as a gift. God didn’t pick you up cheap at a dollar store. You weren’t on the clearance rack of Target because no one else wanted you. God didn’t get you as a dumpster dive where he was searching for free stuff. God paid the highest price for you.

Three days later on the first Easter Sunday that power of God was proven to be greater than death. Jesus did not come back as a ghost. Jesus did not come back as just a warm feeling in the hearts of the disciples. He was raised from the dead, the proof and promise that resurrection is real.

It is easy to believe in everlasting life. It is easy to believe in heaven. These are things many people think about when they don’t want to admit their mortality. These things are vague hopes for immortality. But that is not the nature of God’s plans for resurrection. And they are not God’s plans for you.

For that we need to go back to Matthew’s gospel. The women leave the tomb quickly with fear and great joy. They’re heading to tell the disciples when Jesus meets them. According to our English translations Jesus says, “Greetings!” How lame! What is this, a Hallmark Card or the Bible? If that’s what Jesus said he might just as well have said, “Hi there. How are you doing?” No, let’s get closer to what Jesus said which was, “Rejoice!”

Picture Jesus here with a beaming smile on his face, a twinkle in his eye, and greeting the women with, “Rejoice!” as he breaks into a hearty laugh. This is a glorious time, a real surprise. It’s a complete shock! The women are so joyously excited they are filled with fear at the power they’ve just encountered. They take hold of his feet and worship him.

This might be a tiny detail, but it is Matthew telling us that this is no ghost. You can’t grab hold of a ghost’s feet. And unlike the scary angel who they never touch, Jesus is here as before where they can see him, touch him, and talk with him.

For our lives tomorrow as the Easter story fades into “real life” we remember that God’s version of resurrection is not to have it be something theoretical for the future. It is not a vague promise. It is God’s real power breaking into our lives for today.

Good Friday might be sad and Easter might be joyful but we need both. Both must be held. On Good Friday the price is paid for you. True love is revealed. On Easter the power of that love comes to life in real flesh and blood for real lives today.

God meets you, not as an angel, not as a fuzzy feeling in your heart, nor as in the words of a story from an old book, but real and with a big hearty smile that says, “Rejoice with me. Dance with me! Death is not the end. My love for you is for today, for real, for life.” May the resurrection reality guide you this day and every day. Amen

Given my very poor grasp of English grammar I’m not a good authority to be making this point but there are two grammatical mistakes in the translation in the Gospel of Matthew that we have as our gospel reading today. They have to do with mistranslating verses 5 and 6. It reads, “But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.’”

The mistakes are that in Greek the words “who was crucified” are in the perfect tense in Greek but they are translated as simple past tense in English. And that the words, “for he has been raised,” are in the simple past tense in Greek but they are translated into perfect tense in English. It should read, “…you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here; for he was raised, as he said.”

Now given the hour of the morning I’d be shocked if you noticed anything different about what I just said verse what’s translated in Matthew; and that’s okay. But it’s actually an important point. What is at issue here is what is the ongoing reality of Jesus? Do we see Jesus primarily as the crucified savior or as the resurrected savior?

Does it make any difference? It did to Matthew when he wrote his gospel and it is important to him for us to know that Jesus is the crucified savior first and foremost. Resurrected savior is secondary. He gives this message primarily through the Greek verb tenses and the problem is our translations get them wrong. Matthew’s point is that the resurrection was a one time event. It was great and all, but the ongoing identity of Jesus is the crucified one.

Why is it important to know Jesus as the crucified savior more than the resurrected savior? Because it affects what you think about God and how God works. Resurrection is a great miracle, but crucifixion is love. Ultimately it is love, not flashy miracles that saved us.

I am reading a true story about a woman who lived in the area I grew up in and she mentions one particularly horrific train wreck from the 1920’s which gruesomely killed many passengers. People immediately began to ask, “Where was God in all this?” “Why did these innocent people have to die?” “Why does God allow these terrible things to happen?”

These questions all come from an attitude which is rooted in seeing Jesus as the resurrected savior, not the crucified one. People want there to be happy endings. They expect God to make it so. They expect there to be special protection for faithful people. God should keep bad things from happening to good people. All-in-all they expect God to elevate situations above the ordinary dirt of the world.

But now look at it seeing Jesus as the crucified one. Was the crucifixion fair? Nope. Was it just? Nope. Did Jesus deserve it? No. God knows how dirty and hurtful and messed up this world is. He didn’t protect himself from it when he was here. And he isn’t going to magically wipe away the dangers of the world for us. Instead he promises in his love to be with us through the problems.

Why does God do it this way? Well, that’s for God to answer, not me. But here are a couple guesses. I think it’s like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. It is a hard struggle for the butterfly to do it. But if you help it to save it energy it will never develop the strength it needs to be able to fly. The hardship is essential for it to develop its potential.

This does not mean that I am going to preach on this Easter Sunday that God has decided we need to be toughened by the school of hard knocks. And he expects us to passively put up with it because he was crucified. It does however, mean that God’s love is real. If love is real then there has to be freedom. And if there is true freedom then there is the real risk of getting hurt.

Seeing Jesus as the one who has been crucified in no way reduces the amazement and joy of the resurrection. In fact it strengthens it. I think the joy in the resurrection will be all the greater for the bangs and bumps we encounter in this life.

What did Paul day in the 15^th chapter of 1^st Corinthians that we read earlier? “So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.” What great things God has in store for us! Everlasting life so great and wonderful that words cannot describe it.

Our Lord has been crucified, and was raised. This is a promise of God’s love and commitment to us here and now. And it is the promise of God’s glory for us in the future. As I said before, resurrection is a great miracle, but crucifixion is love. Ultimately it is love, not flashy miracles that saved us. And that love is greater than words can describe too. Thanks be to God who promises to raise us up to fully know his love forever. Amen.

The death of Jesus on Good Friday gives us a good opportunity to understand an important part of the Nicene Creed; actually the whole point of why the creed was created. And it also reminds us of a very important thing for our own lives.

The Nicene Creed was created in the year 325 by a group of the leading minds in Christianity who gathered from throughout the Roman Empire. At issue was how divine was Jesus? Was he truly and fully God or just like God or a little piece of God come down to earth?

Some Christians said that Jesus was only “like” God. He was distinct and separate from God. They claimed he was just a little part of God who was created by the Father and sent down to earth. To them Jesus was somehow a lesser being than God.

Others rejected this idea. They said Jesus was truly and fully divine; that he always existed and always would. They said that Jesus was the ultimate revelation of God. There never would be a greater one.

Those who said Jesus was somehow lesser to the Father said what do you do about Jesus dying on the cross? God couldn’t have died. That would be impossible. How was he then raised? The fullness of God couldn’t have dwelt in Jesus.

On the other side, those who said Jesus was fully God said that it was essential that Jesus, as the fullness of God, did die on the cross.

By far the majority opinion, and the side that won, was the side that said Jesus and the Father were equal; that Jesus was fully God. The Nicene Creed’s seeks to make that abundantly clear. You know the words when it talks about Jesus: “God from God, Light from Light. True God from True God. Begotten, not made. Of one being with the Father through whom all things were made.” Okay, okay you want to say. We get the point. But why be so emphatic about it. Who really cares? Isn’t this all just a philosophical debate?

Let’s put it all in terms of our lives and current situation. You’ve probably heard me preach before that I think science is an excellent way for us humans to understand the universe better. One thing that science teaches us is that there are many things we cannot know. Notice, not things that we don’t know because we haven’t figured them out yet; but things that we can clearly prove that it is impossible to know. And all of these things are the absolutes that we so desperately want to know. You may have heard me rattle this list off before. There’s the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which says you cannot know the speed and position of an atom. There is the speed of light which Einstein says you cannot attain. There is absolute zero in temperature. We than theorize about it but it is impossible to reach. And there is zero time. Huge telescopes and giant particle accelerators can help us see billions of years into the past but they cannot see the beginning of the universe and they cannot see what happened beforehand.

In other words, this universe has us humans boxed in. There are boundaries. There are limits. And we cannot get past them.

For me as a Christian I take a step of faith and say these boundaries point to an Other who must exist. God is real. There has to be a Creator. We the created can try as we might – whether it’s scientific thought, or eating forbidden fruit, or building towers to heaven like the tower of Babel, – we can’t get to the Creator – this Other outside the universe.

As Christians we believe the entire human enterprise since humans began walking this earth has been about getting to God, and we’ve failed. We cannot get to God, so in Christ God has come to us. We can’t know what it is to be God, but God has come in order to know what it is to be us. That in and of itself is a huge statement about God’s love.

How did your life begin? You were conceived and born. How did Jesus’ get here? He was conceived and born. He grew up knowing fully what it meant to have a scraped knee, or live with annoying people, or know the joy of seeing the first flower bloom in springtime. This is all the fullness of God – God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten, not made. Of one being with the Father through whom all things were made – who has perfectly experienced first hand what it is to be a human.

God didn’t have to do it. God could do anything. But God’s love for his created creatures – for us – is so great that it is God’s choice to do it this way.

God has even been like you all the way to death. When Jesus died on that cross it wasn’t a part of God that died. God did die. God knows what it is to die because he experienced death. He didn’t send Jesus off like studying death was some sort of a class project. As if the Father said to Jesus, “Go to earth and die and then come back and give me a report of what it was like.” No, God did it completely and first hand.

“Hold on,” you might say, “This makes no sense. If God died then there is no God. God is gone.”

Despite the Nicene Creed most people in their minds make the same heretical distinction between Jesus as God and God the Father that the creed was written to end. That way Jesus the human can die but God can still be fully alive. Then Jesus is brought back to life by God on Easter. But that’s wrong. If that is the case then God doesn’t fully know what it is to be human.

I know this is all hard to understand. Don’t get a headache over it. Remember, we’re dealing with the breakdown of the boundaries of the universe here. God has broken them and our limited minds have not and cannot ever grasp that. But we do learn wonderful things from it.

You as a sin-filled human are valuable enough that God in his fullness has died in order to have you. You were bought with a price. You weren’t cheap. God has paid dearly for you in a way that nothing can even pay a higher price.

We live in awe and amazement of God’s love for us this day and we are thankful that we are so perfectly held in God’s all-powerful love. Amen.

If this is what you imagined then you’re like most people.  And you’ve completely overlooked the fact that the text says Jesus rode two donkeys into Jerusalem – not just one.  Listen to the text again.  In verse 2 Jesus says, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.”  And in verse 6 we read, “The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.”

In seminary we had a lot of fun with this.  We joked about it being a circus act with Jesus jumping back and forth between the donkey and its colt.  Or we said this was proof that Jesus was exceptionally bowlegged and that he had to have two animals to be wide enough to accommodate him.  One of the professors called it “Cowboy Jesus” as he rode both animals.

What is really going on here?  First, it is worth noting that the other gospels – Mark, Luke, and John – all say Jesus rode just one donkey.  Matthew is the exception here.  Did he believe Jesus literally rode two animals that day?  That’s hard to answer, but it is safe to say that Matthew is both emphasizing fulfillment of scripture and playing around with words; to nudge us to recognize the irony of other words that will be said a few verses later.

Matthew gets the idea of two donkeys from the prophesy he is quoting, Zechariah 14:4 which says, “Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”  The prophesy is intended to say that the promised one will not arrive like a king on a mighty war horse, but in a humble and meek way on a donkey. 

Now Matthew knew the principles of Hebrew poetry, and he certainly has to have understood that Zechariah was using ‘poetic parallelism’ in his prophesy.  When Zechariah made his prophesy he didn’t intend to say that Jesus would arrive on two donkeys.  But Matthew was also sees Scripture from trained rabbinic and scribal eyes, in which every detail is important.  And so to emphasize the complete fulfillment of Scripture, he has the disciples fetch two animals and has Jesus ride on both of them.

The way he takes these words from Zechariah literally sets the stage to challenge the literal words the crowds will be saying as Jesus rides into town.  What do the crowds say?  “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

We said those words too as we began worship today.  But do you know what they mean; especially the word Hosanna?  Hosanna is a word we say and we think we know what it means, but we probably don’t; just like the crowds who welcomed Jesus that day.

We say lots of words that we don’t really mean.  When we meet someone we’ll often say, “Hi, how are you?”  But do we really mean it?  What do you usually say when someone asks how you’re doing?  Quite often it’s something like, “Fine.  How are you?”  Or we reply with “How are you?”  We only really mean it if it is someone we know.  Then they will be honest enough to say, “My back’s hurting today.” Or, “I can’t get rid of this cold,” or something like that. 

One time I was at a gas station pumping gas and someone pulled up to the other side of the pump.  I had never met the man before and when he got out I said in a typical friendly tone, “How are you?”  And he started listing off all his aches and pains.  And I thought, “I was just being friendly when I said, ‘How are you?’ I didn’t really mean it!”

I think that’s what the crowd was like when they were welcoming Jesus with hosannas.  What does hosanna really mean?   It is a transliteration of two Hebrew words which mean, “Help now, we pray!” Or, “Save now, we pray!”   It is from Psalm 118:25 which is a plea to God for help.

But that isn’t what the crowds really meant when they called out to Jesus with “hosanna”.  It the first century it had become a largely meaningless shout of joy; as meaningless as “How are you?” is for us.

Ironically of course the crowds were right.  They were crying out to the right person for salvation even as they didn’t know it.  And that is an irony in the words that Matthew definitely wants us to get. 

Who was this person the crowds were unknowingly calling out to for salvation?  And why would they be crying out for his execution in just a few short days?  The truth is they didn’t really know who he was or what he was up to.  And when they did see they didn’t like it.

Some certainly believed he was, or should be, an armed military messiah.  They would be “free” they thought if this Jesus guy would overthrow their Roman oppressors.  Remember, Passover is the celebration all these pilgrims have gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate and Passover was a celebration of independence from slavery to Egypt.  Many people today still look to Jesus to be some sort of power-filled messiah who will help them to: win a war, fight their agenda, or if nothing else divinely beat up on the bad guys of the world who manage to escape the world’s justice systems. 

On that day some believed him to be a prophet.  The crowds even say in verse 11, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”  Here they weren’t exactly wrong, but they weren’t right either.  The view of Jesus has always been popular, and remains highly popular today too.  That Jesus was a good man and a great teacher, perhaps even the best and greatest man and teacher ever.  He is a great example to live by; but he is not ‘Savior’.  It is one thing to call Jesus a great guy.  It is on an entirely different level to call him ‘Savior’.  To call him Savior one must first admit that one needs to be saved and that one does not have the power to do it.  Our world teaches us that we have to trust to our own wisdom and skill – not someone else’s. 

To call Jesus “prophet” or “great teacher” isn’t technically wrong, but it is so far from the truth that you’ve completely missed the point.

Some people simply ignored Jesus that day.

Some people simply joined in the crowd to see what the excitement was about.

     Though they called out “Save us!” few saw Jesus that day as God coming to bring them that salvation.

In the original version of the Interpreter’s Bible Commentary it notes, “In the crowd on the first Palm Sunday were represented all the half-beliefs about Christ that mark our own day.” (Volume 7, pg. 503)

Who was this man (somehow riding two donkeys) being heralded by crowds who didn’t really know what they were saying?  We have the benefit of knowing the rest of the story.  We know how it ends, but we still do have the same question.  Who is this man? 

Military leader?

Prophet?

A good man?

Someone not really all that important?

A bit of entertainment like a parade?

Or Savior to whom you cry out like a broken and helpless beggar truthfully and fully saying, “Hosanna; Help, save me, I pray.  You who enters on a donkey, who will be dead by Friday, I need you because it is the only hope I have.”

 Amen

The atomic scientist jumps to his feet and declares, “I’m the smartest man in the world.  It would be a loss to all humanity if I were to die today!”  With that he grabs a parachute and jumps out of the plane.

The priest and the boy scout are now all that’s left.  With alarm on his face the priest says, “I have no family.  I am ready to meet my Maker.  You are still young and have your whole life ahead of you.  You take the last parachute.”
     But the boy scout replies, “Hold on, Father.  Don’t say any more.  There’s still two parachutes left.  The world’s smartest man just jumped out of the plane wearing my backpack!”

Sometimes the supposed experts don’t grasp the most basic things.  We see that with the religious leaders in our gospel reading for today.  They can’t seem to come to terms with the reality of Jesus curing the man blind from birth.  And so they strap on a backpack rather than a parachute and insist they are right.

There is a very important verse that I want to pay particular attention to because I think it is key to understanding the whole gospel, and because it is so often misinterpreted.  It is verse 3 in the beginning right after the disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?”  And Jesus replies, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

I have heard this verse interpreted to mean some very disturbing things.  When times are tough I’ve heard people use it to say things like, “Well, I’m sure God has a plan.”  Or, “God is testing me.”  Or, “God is teaching me something through this trial, I just haven’t learned the lesson yet.”  Some people imagine God micromanaging every aspect of life.  I’ve even heard things as ridiculous as, “God made sure that parking spot was available for me because he knew I couldn’t arrive late for the meeting.”  Give me a break!  If God really does regularly arrange things like that then when I get to heaven God’s got some explaining to do!  Because by my opinion, life’s not fair.  And it should be if God arranged things that neatly.  But, people receive merit or favors they don’t deserve; meanwhile deserving people don’t get the benefits of their labors.

In the gospel reading the disciples come with a pretty standard understanding of fairness to the situation.  They ask Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?”  Obviously someone must have done something wrong for this man to be disabled.  But Jesus’ reply is that that way of thinking is wrong.  This man was born blind so that God’s works could be revealed. 

Now you cannot say, “Well, therefore if someone’s disabled or suffering it is so God’s works can be revealed.”  That’s still missing the point.  The answer is, “Maybe, but then again, maybe not.”  The thing is, no one thought fits all.

The disciples asked, “Who sinned?”  In the case of birth defects it could be that someone did something wrong.  If a woman does the wrong things while she is pregnant the fetus can be affected for life.  The child born will suffer the consequences of its mother’s sin.  But, birth defects can happen when the mother does everything right too.  In that case no one sinned.  Does that mean it’s God’s will?  Some people will say that.  But I still would disagree.  I disagree because it is still forcing God into our categories of right and wrong.  And that is the root of the problem the religious leaders are having.  The blind man’s healing just doesn’t fit, but look how hard they try to make it fit.  This chapter reads like a politician caught in a scandal and he’s doing everything to deny it.

First, in verse 16 they say Jesus must be a sinner because he did this healing on a Sabbath.  But then there’s the problem that Jesus did do the healing, and in their minds no sinner could do that.

So in verse 18 they decide that this man must not have actually been blind.  So they call in his parents.  His parents confirm: yep, it’s our son, and yes he was born blind.  And being savvy they say, “We do not know how it is that now he sees…”

Now they clearly bring out their categories.  In verses 28-29 they say, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.  We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”  So now they’re not calling Jesus a sinner, they’ve just saying they don’t know where he’s come from.

After the former blind man bests them in their interrogation of him they say in verse 34, “You were born entirely in sins, and you are trying to teach us?”  So now they’ve labeled the blind man a sinner so as to dismiss him, which is what they do later on in the verse.  This is easy to miss, but verse 34 ends with the words, “And they drove him out.”

“And they drove him out.”  We don’t speak the way they did then which is why we miss this, but when something was driven out it was demon possessed.  So they have effectively gone from discrediting this man, to calling him a sinner, to considering him demon possessed.  All of this is an effort to keep their categories of how God has to work preserved.

At the end of the gospel reading the blind man gets to speak with Jesus again.  Some Pharisees overhear and say to Jesus, “Surely we are not blind, are we?”  Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin.  But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” 

Jesus has spoken to the heart of their problem.  They insist that they are right.  They insist that they and they alone know about God and know what God is up to.  It is this very assurance that makes them wrong. 

The Pharisees insist that God is about rules and regulations and laws.  And because of that they can never seem to see that God is about grace and love.  So they remain blind.  May we not make the same mistake.  It is very easy to become blind to God’s new ways when we insist on our own old ways.

This gospel reading is huge and we could spend hours looking at it.  We’ve only looked at one piece, but there is one other detail I want to look at in closing because it fits well.

When the Pharisees interview the blind man for the second time they say to him, “Give glory to God!  We now that this man is a sinner.”  He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner.  One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”  So the Pharisees have commanded him to give glory to God.  And what do we find when the blind man meets Jesus again?  It is in verse 38.  “He said, ‘Lord I believe.’ And he worshiped him.”

Yes, the blind man did obey the Pharisees.  He gave glory to God alright!  He did it truly.  And that is our response too.  We do not do well to worry about fair and unfair.  We make a mistake when we judge others.  We are blind when we insist we know how God works.  But we see when we give glory to God.  Amen

The thing is it opens the can of worms that is the other translational issues with this passage.  There have never been, and there are now, no English translations of the Bible that get this scene of Jesus by the tomb of Lazarus right.  In fact I’m told that the only language translations that ever have gotten it right are the German translations.  And that is because Martin Luther got it right when he translated the New Testament from Greek to German in 1522.

At issue here is what is Jesus attitude?  From 11:35, “Jesus wept,” we’d come away with the idea that Jesus is sad about the whole thing.  And so when we read in verse 33 Jesus was, “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved,” we automatically assume this refers to sadness.  The same thing happens in verse 38 when we read, “Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb.”  We assume this is all sadness.

But it is not.  It is anger.  A closer word-for-word translation of verses 33 to 38 into English would go something like this.  “Then when Jesus saw her wailing and the assembly of the Jews with her wailing, he snorted with rage; his spirit was stirred up.  And he said, “Where have you put him?”  They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”  Jesus wept.  The Jews said, “See how he continued to love him.”  Some said, “Wasn’t he able this one who opened the bad eyes of the blind man to do something in this death?  Then Jesus, again indignation rising within him, came to the tomb.”

I think it is important to point out Jesus anger in this scene because it really is a mix of anger and sadness – not just a sappy picture of a sentimental Jesus.   We learn from both Jesus anger and his sadness.  We learn from his sadness that God does know and acknowledge the pain that death causes in human life.  Jesus knows what’s coming.  He knows God will raise Lazarus from the dead.  But Jesus is not cold and callous, ignoring the emotions of death. 

Yet Jesus is still angry also.  Why?  What has angered him?  Biblical scholars since the third century have struggled to answer that.  There have been many suggestions.  The one that best fits is that Jesus is angry at the lack of faith of this crowd of Jews and possibly the lack of faith in Martha’s sister Mary. 

Notice that Martha went out to meet Jesus before he got to the village.  Martha tells Jesus that she believes in him and that through him will come the resurrection.  Contrast her with Mary who stays at home crying.  When Mary does finally come to Jesus she kneels down and says, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.”

So you see the difference in these women’s faith?  Martha recognizes Jesus’ role as the Messiah.  She trusts him to do what is God’s plan.  Mary on the other hand wants Jesus for herself.  She’s upset that Jesus hasn’t come and saved her brother for her.  Mary’s motives are ultimately selfish.

It is in response to this from Mary that Jesus becomes angry.  And the Jews around don’t help much.  Don’t get the idea that they are meekly and sorrowfully saying, “Couldn’t this man who opened the eyes of the blind man have saved this man from death?”  They are really saying, “Some friend this Jesus is.  He didn’t even high-tail it here to help out his friends.  Why didn’t he do something?”  Their tone is derogatory.  And after that statement the Bible repeats that Jesus was indignant and angry.

Perhaps this isn’t a parallel at all, but I know a lot of people have trouble with wireless networks in their homes.  I know of more than one person who has trouble getting their printer to print from more than just one computer.  Imagine you are a computer expert and you’ve helped out a friend to get their network working perfectly.  Then you go away on a business trip and you find out they’ve having a few minor problems.  You send word back that you’ll be there in a couple days, just hold tight.  When you arrive back your friends say, “Since you were delayed we had the neighbor, who’s always messing things up, come in and see what he could do.  He seemed confident that he knew what he was doing but now nothing works at all.”  You’d be angry.  And you’d feel betrayed.  Yes, you’d probably fix it but you’d scold them for having some hack come in and mess around with all your good work.  I think that is some of Jesus’ anger with Mary and the Jews.  They’re messing around with his good work.

What do we learn from all of this?  Well, certainly don’t do as Mary and the Jews do!  Don’t cry out to God that you’re not getting the personal service you want to.  That’s not what it’s all about.  Instead, look to verses 25 and 25 where Jesus is speaking with Martha.  I’ve heard these verses described as the most far reaching promise anywhere in the Gospel of what relationship with Jesus offers to those who embrace it.  Those verses are again where Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will life, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?” 

Commentator Gail O’Day notes this about these verses, “These are not idle words of hope, because they name the greatest threat to full relationship with God: death.  They offer a vision of life to the believer in which his or her days do not need to be reckoned by the inevitable power of death, but instead by the irrevocable promise of life with God.  [The believer is invited into] a vision of life in which one remains in the full presence of God during life and after death.  The physical reality of death is denied power over one’s life with God, as is the metaphysical reality of death.”  New Interpreters Bible Pg. 694

Said differently, do you believe in the power of the resurrection or not?  Do you live life today, and make decisions today, with the resurrection in mind?  I think many people worry and awful lot about a whole bunch of irrelevant stuff; because an awful lot of stuff is irrelevant when it comes to the resurrection.

Now I’m not suggesting you say to the IRS, “My 1040 isn’t really important in light of the resurrection so I’m not going to bother with it.”  Don’t attempt that!  But don’t fret over financial worries, or how your stock portfolio is doing, or how much Kodak stock has fallen in the last five years.

Most of what is on the news on any given day is irrelevant and unimportant.  Measure it all in light of the reality of the resurrection and see how much of it really matters.  Some does.  Most doesn’t.

Like Martha live and trust in the resurrection.  It is God’s promise to you.  Amen

Maybe you like camping.  Maybe you don’t, but I imagine most people’s ideas about retirement are a lot like Lewey Lake.  The place is nice and relaxing.  If the weather is nice and you want to take a walk or go for a canoe ride on the lake you can.  If the weather is bad you don’t have to.  If you want to sit back and do absolutely nothing, you can do that.  You can do what you feel like doing, and only what you feel like doing whenever you want to.

Perhaps that is people’s ideas of retirement, but inasmuch as it is within their power, those not yet retired would love to have the same thing.  It seems to be part of our human nature that we like to make things easy and convenient for ourselves.  What is the trend in building houses?  Do we build them with less and less conveniences and comforts?  No, we forever add more.  It used to be that a house was simply a structure of wood and stone.  Then people started adding pipes for plumbing – so they didn’t have to go outside for the bathroom.  Then wiring for electricity and pipes for natural gas.  Then phone lines.  Then TV cable.  Now we add computer access and wireless technology too.  We try to make everything easier, more comfortable and more convenient.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love waking up in the middle of winter in a house with a furnace that has kept me warm all night, stepping on a cozy carpeted floor, flipping a switch to have the lights come on, and on and on go the comforts.  But I think we run the risk of making life and “progress” be all about ever more conveniences.  And if we do that we run the same risk in our lives of faith; thinking that somehow things should be forever getting better and more convenient.

Lewey Lake in the Adirondacks is a calm lake.  The water isn’t exactly stagnant, but there is no noticeable current.  If the campsites were along a raging river you can be sure I wouldn’t find it so nice.

In our gospel reading Jesus meets a woman by a well.  A well is of course a man-made thing in order to make getting water easier.  If you live somewhere and you don’t want to have to walk to a stream to get water you dig a deep hole.  Hopefully you reach water, and if you do you now have water where you want it.  Jesus says to the woman that he will give her living water, not water from a well.  And if you remember last week’s gospel reading where Nicodemus the Pharisee meets Jesus at night time you’ll remember that Jesus uses many words with double meanings.  He says to Nicodemus that he must be born again, or born from above – same word in Greek but with two meanings.  Nicodemus takes the wrong meaning. 

Here again in this week’s gospel reading are words with double meanings.  Jesus says he will give this woman living water, which also means flowing water, not stagnant.  The water in that well was basically stagnant.  Jesus says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.  The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” (vs. 13-14)

Now of course the woman, being like all human beings and wanting things to be comfortable and convenient for her says, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”  This is funny because we know Jesus is talking spiritually and this woman is taking him literally, but do you see how her first thought is to take the goodness of Jesus and domesticate it to make her life easier for her?  She wants to take the living water and have it be her own private little source of tap water in her kitchen where she can turn it on when convenient and turn it off when convenient.  But is this what Jesus intends?  Nope.  Like much of the gospel of John the story unfolds in a somewhat comic way as the discussion turns to this woman’s husband – or perhaps we should say her lack of a current husband – in light of her regular stream of husbands. 

We could get side tracked on this whole husbands issue, and it could be quite amusing, but to keep moving on, notice that Jesus never actually criticizes her.  Whatever her past may be, it is a side issue that Jesus only uses to reveal that he has special knowledge of her.  And through this the proverbial light bulb goes on in her head.  She starts to put it all together.  She realizes what Jesus is talking about.  The spring of living water begins to well up within her.  The conversation continues and she understands.

As proof of her understanding when the bungling disciples return she goes off to tell others about Jesus, and she leaves her water jug behind.  So much for her need of water from the well!  So much for her need to domesticate the world into a calm pond where she can take out her canoe when she feels like it.  A new and living force is driving her.  It is untamed.  It is unpredictable.  But it is very joyful.  Something greater and even more important than the need for water has come up.  It is the need to spread the word about the arrival of Jesus and the spring of living water that he brings.

I think our first choice would be to have life along a lake where we can put the canoe in when we feel like it, but not if we don’t feel like it.  Sometimes I fear many people put their whole lives into making the world a calm pond for them to play in.  And it spills over into the spirituality too.  They’d rather worship stagnant water, rather than living water.  Stagnant water is safe, contained, convenient and controllable.  Moving water is not.  Just ask the people of Japan. 

Following Christ is a very convenient thing if the water is stagnant.  You can take your canoe of faith out when it suits you and when the weather is nice.  And if it doesn’t suit you then you can stay on shore and do what you like.  Many people would love to have faith in Christ be like this.

But Jesus did not say, “I come to bring you stagnant water.”  Stagnant water just grows algae and starts to smell.  And Jesus did not say, “I come to give you a lakeside life where all is convenient.”  He said, “The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

Jesus speaks of a lively and dynamic life of faith.  It is one of adventures and challenges, joys and tragedies.  And it is one of unexpected surprises.  Who’d have thought something would come up that is so important that a person in need of water would set that aside to do something else.  God is up to the same sort of unpredictable things all the time.  Don’t miss them by confusing convenience and comfort with Godliness.

Though we may tame everything in our lives, God remains untamed.  May the spring of living water that our God uses to nourish each of us flow with abundance in your life so that you may never be thirsty.  Amen

Nicodemus is a leader of the Jews.  We know from this that he is not a religious novice.  He knows scripture and he knows his faith.  But we’ll see how well his knowledge helps him deal with Jesus’ new teachings.  That Nicodemus comes to Jesus at all tells us two things.  One, there was a division within Judaism about Jesus.  Some Jews accepted him.  Some rejected him.  And some were just curious.  Nicodemus appears to be coming with genuine interest in Jesus. 

He comes at night though.  Night time was actually the time that many religious debates took place.  And so from that perspective this is nothing unusual.  That he comes alone though makes us suspect he isn’t entirely comfortable with how his other Jewish friends are going to feel about this.  Next week we’re going to read in our gospel reading about the woman who meets Jesus at a well; and she comes at broad daylight despite having a possibly sketchy past.  Night and darkness are going to become symbols of how a person receives Jesus.

Nicodemus greets Jesus as Rabbi – a title showing respect, but then he says something foolish that we the readers know is foolish but he does not.  He says, “We know that no one can do the signs you do apart from God.”  This seems like an innocent enough statement, except just two verses before our gospel reading began, we the readers have discovered that, “… many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing.  But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone.  So Jesus doesn’t automatically entrust himself to everyone who believes in him because of his miraculous powers.  Nicodemus thinks he is getting in Jesus’ good graces, but we the readers know this isn’t going to work. 

And then we begin to see just how out of sync this conversation is going to get.  Jesus says you must be born from above, but in Greek this can mean either born again or born from above.  Nicodemus takes it as born again and asks a ridiculous question, “Can a man enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”  All I can say is every mother out there has to being going “Ouch!”  Not only was it tough enough to get a several pound baby out, let alone a fully grown man!

Of course Jesus means that a person’s whole way of living and understanding the world must be born again.  The old categories of understanding life and death, and God’s relationship to people, and how God works, and everything in the universe needs to be reborn.  Nicodemus assumes that he can explain what Jesus means through his preconceived notions of what is and isn’t possible.  This whole way of thinking has to be upended because in Jesus God is revealing that he is acting in completely new and unexpected ways.  The old categories simply don’t fit anymore.  We know the end of the story.  When the dead are raised all bets are off.  You need to rethink everything about life.  Life is about safety.  You prolong it.  You try to make the best of it.  You take a hedonistic approach to things because when this is all there is you’d better make the most of it.  But with resurrection to eternal life suddenly everything is different.

But Nicodemus seems stuck in his misunderstanding.  He doesn’t seem to be able to get it.  Jesus’ words continue but Nicodemus is lost.  Have you ever had a conversation with someone and you’re trying to explain something and they just don’t get it?  No matter how hard you try you know you just aren’t reaching them?  Nicodemus must have been giving this glazed over look of confusion.  And here he is; he’s got an impressive religious resume.  He’s a Pharisee, a ruler of Jews, a teacher of Israel, a religious expert in what God is up to, …and he’s clueless. 

Well, at least we’ll give him credit for trying.  In a text that should humble every pastor and theologian, having impressive credentials in religion does not mean that they know God’s will.  They might be just as dark and lost and confused as Nicodemus even as they think they know God’s word.  Faith is always a genuinely humble enterprise.  As soon as you think you know what’s going on it’s probably the first sign that you’re getting lost.

Jesus starts talking about the Spirit and wind, another single word in Greek with a double meaning, but Nicodemus isn’t keeping up.  He’s trying to fit all this into his old categories of understanding when he doesn’t get that he’s got to chuck out the categories themselves and take on something new.

Jesus uses another example with a double meaning, one that Nicodemus should know well – Moses in the wilderness.  When the people sinned and God sent the serpents to punish them Moses is commanded to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole.  The people have to look up to it and be cured.  Jesus uses this example to show how an agent of death, the snake, has become a symbol of life.  The same will go for the cross, when an execution device will become an instrument of salvation.  We realize that God has done this sort of thing before.  But again, Nicodemus is lost.

It is in this context that we find the Bible’s most quoted verse, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son to that those who believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life.”  We’ve been dealing with a lot of words with double meanings in this passage, and this most famous John 3:16 has a couple words we’d better pay attention to also.

The gospel writer John has a very specific thing in mind when he uses the word “world,” because he does not mean the earth or the created universe.  From John 3:16 alone you don’t recognize what John means when he says world, but since he uses the word many times we learn that when John says “world” he means: that which is at odds with God’s purposes.  The world is that which ignores God, hates God, and seeks to undermine his work.  In John’s gospel the word “world” is pejorative.  You don’t want to be a part of the “world”.  And that makes the teachings of verse 16 so extraordinary.

For God so loved the world – that which hates him and wants to undermine him – that he gave his only son so that the world may not perish but come to eternal life.  I don’t know about you, but I’d hardly give any of my prized possessions to someone I hated, let alone one of my children.  (Perhaps in a few years when they become teenagers I’ll change my mind!)  God’s love is so great that he will even make great sacrifices to be reconciled with those who oppose him.  And the word “gave” here isn’t just like giving a gift.  This is like giving a sacrifice or offering; much deeper.

Don’t take these thoughts too far, because they’ll lead you to heresy pretty fast, but just consider for a moment what it means that God makes a sacrifice to have you.  Who’s in charge here?  Is this not God making an offering to us?  Who is demanding this offering?  Is the crucifixion about God meeting God’s demands for righteousness or is it somehow God meeting our demands for righteousness.  Had humanity set the rules and God has decided to meet them through Jesus?  It is possible to argue it either way.

We begin to see how even our categories of righteousness are getting challenged.  We laugh at Nicodemus, and we also laugh at ourselves realizing that we aren’t necessarily all t hat different.  God is working outside of our categories too.  God is more loving and more lavish than we have the categories to understand. 

Being born again, or born from above, is not about a personal religious conversion experience that some Christians talk about.  It is to have one’s entire way of understanding the universe, and God’s actions within it, turned inside out.  It is seeing salvation in an execution devise.  It is having a God who gives lavishly to those filled with hate.  It is seeing resurrection not as a bland, “Grandma will come back to life again,” but as an incredible miracle which breaks every rule and law and expectation we have of life.  It is seeing that God is up to something new and absolutely impossible to predict from a worldly point of view.  But it is the truth that we life.  We are wise to keep our minds open and our hearts alive to the possibilities God is opening around us every day.  Amen

Temptations can trip up our plans for the ultimate good.  In our gospel reading we have Jesus’ being tempted to trip up God’s plans for the ultimate good.  It is worth us looking at what these temptations are, because they are not typical.  Usually when we think of temptation we think in terms of food, drugs, lust, or greed.  The temptations we read about in our gospel reading are far more subtle.  They were to do things that were always considered good; things even supported by tradition and scripture.

Look at the first temptation – turn stones into bread.  Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness echo Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness.  Did God not divinely provide food for them?  The manna came from heaven.  God sent quails gave them meat.  Rocks miraculously provided water.  Why can’t Jesus do the same to meet his essential human needs for sustenance?  Why?  Because this is a temptation about where Jesus turns for his trust.  Does he trust in himself or does he trust in God his Father?

My family enjoys camping.  I feel like I am strong and fit enough to set up camp, build a fire, and even cut a tree down if I have to.  I am confident that by my own abilities I can take care of and protect my family.  Do I think to pray for God’s help before I go camping?  Not readily.  I don’t feel the need.  Now, throw me in the middle of a lake without a life vest and you can believe I’ll be fervently praying for a miracle to get me to shore, because I can’t swim!

I assume we are probably all guilty of the same sort of thing.  When you think that you can take care of a situation by your own abilities you don’t think much of it.  You probably don’t pray for God’s help.  If you are a confident driver do you often pray for God’s help to get you where you are going?  Probably not.  But when you are in a situation you can’t control then prayers spontaneously come up.  A lot of people who never pray do a lot of praying in the hospitals.  It seems like only when we feel like we’re in over our head that we turn to God in prayer.

We can easily be guilty of looking to ourselves for trust and not in God.  We forget that all our abilities come from God.  We should never trust in ourselves, but always trust only in God. 

Some of you may know the Rev. Craig Satterly.  He is now a professor at Chicago theological seminary and he used to be the associate pastor at Bethlehem Lutheran in Fairport.  Dr. Satterly is legally blind, although he can see a little bit.  He says he has the luxury of not being able to believe the myth that he can do it all on his own.  He can’t, and he knows he can’t.  Whereas many people can’t but wrongfully think they can.

Let’s look at the second temptation – for Jesus to throw himself off the temple.  The action is not obviously wrong or demonic.  What is wrong with using a miracle to reveal God’s presence and power in the world?  What is wrong with having a miracle to help people believe?  Satan even faithfully quotes scripture to show its propriety.  What is wrong with receiving divine protection from angels?  It even happens in chapter 2 and again at the end of our lesson for today when the angels wait on Jesus.

What is at stake here is: will Jesus accept the limits of being human?  And, what motivates Jesus’ actions; the world’s standards or God’s standards? 

Perhaps the best way to understand this temptation is to jump to the crucifixion.  You know well that Satan didn’t give up on tempting Jesus after this wilderness experience.  The temptations continued, and especially on the cross. 

It was not only painful to be crucified, it was also the most shameful way to die.  It was horribly shameful to the person as well as the person’s family and friends to die by crucifixion.  Yet Jesus did it.

You can be sure that Jesus was very seriously tempted on the cross to not only miraculously save himself from the physical pain, but also all the shame of being a complete and total failure, for that is what the crowds thought of him.  To them Jesus was an idiot; a shameful fool who deserved to die in the most ignominious fashion possible.

It is really hard to resist temptation when following God’s call hurts your reputation.  Then you realize how hard it is to trust in God for the security of your identity.  Then you realize how tempting it is to compromise your God-given value and identity to protect your earthly dignity and honor.  Don’t think God measures a person’s honor the same way the world does.  If God did, then Jesus never would have been crucified, for that was the epitome of shame.  It is a tough challenge to follow God’s call when it costs your dignity in the eyes of other people. 

Finally we look at the third temptation – Jesus could rule the kingdoms of the earth.  Now, we can recognize the requirement of bowing down and worshipping Satan as an obvious wrong, but the root of this temptation is far more subtle.  It is to just go with the flow.  Fit into the status quo – Jesus was tempted to use his abilities in a way that would meet the world’s expectations of the Messiah.  The temptation was to be who everyone expects the Messiah to be – a military leader who would beat up the Romans and show who’s boss.  But of course, who then is defining who Jesus is?  The world, or the Father in heaven? 

This temptation is really hard to resist when we are under pressure or feeling anxious.  We live in an anxious time in the church.  Most churches are declining rapidly.  Many fear closing.  In the midst of that it is easy to become so overwhelmed with fear that you lose sight of what God is calling you to do.  We turn in on ourselves and become protective rather than continuing to listen and to follow.  Going back to the first temptation, we look to ourselves to preserve what we know, rather than to trust God and God’s calling and live the new risks.  Because with risk, there is the chance of failure –at least failure in our eyes-, and we don’t want to fail. 

Jesus could have succumbed to this temptation and been the Messiah the way everyone expected.  While he would have enjoyed worldly success, he would have failed God’s kingdom.  As the church we also need to fight off the same temptation.  God may be calling us to something totally new and different, just the way Jesus was a totally different Messiah than anyone was expecting. 

Let me conclude with this.  What do all these temptations mean for our faith?  They teach us that to be a “child of God” means to have a trusting relationship to God that does not ask for miraculous exceptions to being human, but instead listens and follows in new ways every day, trusting that God’s ways are the best way.  We put our faith, our hope, our trust, our identity, our value, and everything that we understand ourselves to be completely in God’s hands, and trust that God’s hands are good hands that will bring us to eternal life.  Amen

We’ll look at Moses first.  He is the greatest person in the Old Testament.  You all know Moses as the one who led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, across the wilderness, and to the Promised Land.  Moses is the one who receives the Law from God.  The Law is the thing that taught the people how to be in relationship with God and with each other.  It taught them how to live rightly.  In a way, Moses is the one who organizes the Jews into a nation and a religion. 

What made Moses such a great leader?  God, of course.  Did Moses want to be the leader?  Nope.  Not one bit.  When God called him to do it Moses said no.  When God insisted Moses starting making all sorts of very good and rational excuses.  He said he wasn’t qualified.  He didn’t know political strategy.  He didn’t know how to lead a revolution.  He wasn’t even a good public speaker.  These are all good excuses.  But they were irrelevant.  God had choses Moses for the job.  Eventually Moses gives in – it took a burning bush, but Moses got the message.

When Moses came to power did it go to his head?  Did he enjoy being the leader?  Nope.  It was nothing but headaches.  Through it all Moses trusted in God and called on the people to do the same.  What reward did he get for all his work?  Nothing – well unless you consider that he gets to see the Promised Land, but he still doesn’t get to enter it.  Why is the topic of a sermon in itself.

Let’s go to Elijah.  If Moses represents the Law then Elijah represents the prophets.  Elijah was a great prophet and man of faith.  Many miracles were attributed to him.  The Bible contains four major stories about him.  In all of them he is highly faithful, and sometimes gutsy.  Life wasn’t easy.  Being faithful didn’t keep him from feeling he had to flee for his life one time.  Elijah is a great example of faith in that he never depends upon his own faith to do things.  He has faith in God’s ability to do things.  And that is a very important distinction.  He knew that he was at best a vehicle for God’s work.  He did not have the power himself.

And of course there with Moses and Elijah is Jesus.  We know the rest of the story and Jesus needs no explanation about why he is great, but the disciples didn’t know that.  To the disciples it was amazing to consider Jesus as even being an equal to Moses and Elijah.  And it is to them that we now turn. 

Peter, James, and John are in awe of what is happening.  Jesus is shining in glory and his is with Moses and Elijah.  This is big.  This is huge!  This is a summit meeting of the greatest men of all time!  Peter opens his mouth and starts to speak.  You know Peter well enough that when he starts talking nonsense is going to come out.

He says, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”  The thing is, though we expect Peter to be speaking nonsense, this statement is not nonsense at all.  I’ve shared this before in sermons about the Transfiguration.  Peter is actually putting a lot of theological concepts together and coming up with a very logical conclusion. 

It was believed in those days that Elijah would return before the end of the world.  Peter sees Jesus, Moses, and Elijah and figures the end has arrived.  He offers to make three dwellings or three booths or tents for them.  In the first century The Festival of the Booths was an annual festival in  anticipation of the end of time.  So in a way what Peter says makes perfect sense.  However, he was totally wrong.

Peter’s mistake wasn’t in his conclusion, it happened before in his assumptions.  Picture the scene again.  Jesus, Moses and Elijah are having a conversation.  Peter actually interrupts the conversation when he says, “Lord it is good for us to be here; if you wish I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”  Peter’s made a great mistake.  He’s seen some information, he’s drawn his own conclusions, and now he’s offering to act on his own conclusions before he has full knowledge of what is going on. 

That is a very dangerous thing.  You shouldn’t try to act when you only have half the facts.  And it is something we can also be guilty of very easily.  The Lutheran magazine ran an article in February about the decline of most mainline denominations in the United States.  Lutheran churches, like UCC, Presbyterian, United Methodist, Episcopalian, Roman Catholic and so forth have been shrinking for several decades.  Now we are really feeling the pinch.  Among the many reasons for this the article raised was that many mainline churches are simply out of touch with the lives of the people, especially young adults. 

When I look at the decline of churches, and look at those church denominations which are growing I sometimes ask myself, “Is it that we are out of touch with the lives of people or is it more that we are out of touch with the will of God?”  Are we being like Peter, looking at half of the information, the information that we know well, and then running off in our own direction doing our own work?  That’s what Peter is really wanting to do. 

What should he have done?  He should have stayed silent.  Just as he interrupts the conversation between Jesus and Moses and Elijah, God now interrupts Peter.  The gospel says, “While he was still speaking a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”  Notice it did not say, “Interrupt him when you think you know the answer.”  Peter needed to keep listening because he didn’t know the full story.  We need to do the same.

And there is a second part to this all.  Not only do we need to continue listening we also need to continue trusting.  What made Moses great?  Was it his faith?  No.  It was that he trusted that God would be faithful.  Did Moses lead the people out of slavery?  No.  God did.  Did Moses bring forth the water from the rock?  No.  God did. 

Did Elijah raise the widow’s son, or heal Naaman, or bring fire upon the burnt offerings by the strength of his own faith?  No.  He trusted God to act faithfully.  The work was not his.  It was God’s.

If you want to be truly great then trust God and listen.  And do not try to do things on your own.  Let yourself be God’s vehicle to work through.  The process will not be easy or straightforward.  God doesn’t always work that way.  But keep listening.  God said, “This is my Son, the Beloved.  Listen to him!”  Amen