Dear Friends of Second Church,

This afternoon I was quicker than the pediatrician’s office and went to pick up a prescription at CVS, only to find myself there (“It’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes, Mr. Grant…”) with a little more time to kill than usual.

I suppose I could have just fallen into my smartphone and left it at that.

But a place like CVS always reminds me that I’ve been meaning to resupply the medicine cabinet, and so I started wandering the store, looking for what I thought I might remember needing if I just saw it one more time.

I was good at recalling the stuff that had dwindled over the winter—cough drops, NyQuil, and whatnot. But the other stuff didn’t come back to me so quickly, and my wandering slowed…Wait, which one is Liz’s toothpaste, again? Did I get a big thing of Q-Tips in my stocking at Christmas this year, or was it last year? Wow, what was it someone told me about “compression socks”? That I should have some or that I shouldn’t?

After a few slow trips up and down the aisles, I was almost ready just to buy one of everything and call it a day.

Fortunately, they called out my prescription and I made it outside with what I had come for, plus a pair of kiddie sunglasses with Elsa from “Frozen” on the frames (no you can’t borrow them).

Yet it also makes me think about all the other things in life we might remember needing if we just saw them one more time.

It might be strange to put it this way, but life, in general, can so easily come to feel like a slow, uncertain trip up and down the aisles of the world.

These days, there are so many people who seem to be searching.

What it is they’re looking for? They can’t quite say. How will they know when they’ve found it? Well, they’re hoping they just will, somehow.

If only they could see “it” again, they’d surely recognize it…whatever it is.

Are they looking for something they truly need, or just, well, restocking the medicine cabinet–replenishing their supplies of whatever it is that helps them get through for now?

It’s easy to enough to see how that happens.

To me, so many of the challenges of our lives are fundamentally spiritual ones, and yet the solutions that come most quickly to us—and the ones that our friends are most likely to offer—so rarely are.

“Just try this,” says one.

“You know, what you need is…” suggests someone else.

Part of my hope for Easter every year is that searching people will find their way to churches like ours, and suddenly remember that, in the end, God is what they have been looking for.

So many important feelings point in God’s direction. A sense of being loved by the Universe. A call to a higher purpose. Gratitude. The feeling of being deeply alive. The power to forgive.

It won’t sell much in the aisles of CVS to say so, but these are the feelings we most dream of having again—the feelings that life’s challenges and disappointments seem to drain out of us, at least for a time.

We need to feel them constantly–to refresh our supplies when they get low.

More to the point, settling for anything else is just treating the symptoms of our maladies, rather than getting to the cause, much less the cure.

Easter is a reminder of what it is to be made whole again.

Think about it. Look around. Maybe you didn’t consider yourself actively in the market for Easter hope, for new life in God, for the wholeness and health represented by the Hebrew word shalom…but isn’t it what you’ve been looking for?

Isn’t that really what you came in search of, after all? Don’t you remember?
See you in church,

I.

I’d like to begin with a story this morning. It’s known as “The Rabbi’s Gift.”

It’s about a Russian monastery that, truth be told, had seen better days.

Although the monastery had once been vast, now, there were only four or five monks left.

The grounds of the monastery had gotten hard to keep up, and had started to grow wild. Many of the buildings were no longer habitable.

The Daily Office of prayers and hymns in the chapel had a distinctly half-hearted feel. There were just too few voices joining in now. You couldn’t cover the gloom.

It was a hard time.

The abbot of the monastery, who was a wise and devoted monk, prayed fervently on all this, but even he could see the handwriting on the wall, and tried to resign himself to what seemed to be the will of God—that the monastery would have to close.

But then one day, an old woman who still occasionally came to visit mentioned the local rabbi, who led a tiny community in the nearby town. She talked about how the rabbi was respected for his great humility and wisdom. The abbot decided to go seek his advice.

He walked into town and knocked on the rabbi’s door. The rabbi was, of course, surprised to see a monk standing there, but he invited him in, and the two men sat down.

The abbot poured out his heart, as the rabbi listened. Then the rabbi poured out his own heart, talking about the challenges of life in his congregation, as the abbot listened.   At the end, the two men realized how much they had in common, and they wept together and embraced.

But as the abbot began to leave, the rabbi said, “Friend, I do not know the answer to your challenges, any more than I know the answer to my own. However, I do know this. Even now, somewhere, the Messiah is among you and your brothers. “

With these words, the two men parted.

As the abbot walked back to the monastery, he thought about what the rabbi had said.

It seemed very clear that the Messiah couldn’t be among the brothers of the monastery. He was the abbot, after all, and he knew his brothers better than anyone.

He thought about his brothers. Well, he thought, it certainly couldn’t be Father Peter.

Peter was so bookish and awkward and looked past you when you tried to talk to him. He couldn’t be the Messiah. But then the abbot thought: well, that’s all true, and yet, even after all these years as a monk, whenever they read the Gospels during the divine service, Father Peter’s eyes still filled with tears.

Maybe he was the Messiah.

Well, in any case, the abbot thought, it couldn’t be Father Vladimir.

Vladimir was a novice master who hadn’t had any novices to train in twenty years. Vladimir kept talking about the old days and was known to wander sadly through the empty dormitory where the monks had once lived, like a man looking for something precious he had lost. He was a sad figure among them. Maybe the saddest of all.

But then the abbot thought: well, there was that day last year when a family with two small children had shown up unannounced, and Vladimir had taken such great delight in the children and made them laugh all afternoon.

Maybe he was the Messiah.

The abbot thought of each of the monks at the monastery, in turn, and while each one had his shortcomings, to his surprise, even so, he could make a case for each one of them as the Messiah.

That night, he told the other monks what the rabbi had said, and they all laughed at once, laughing together for the first time in years.

They knew it wasn’t true.

And yet, in the days that followed, something did change among them.

A new kindness seemed to have crept into their life together. They each seemed to have a new resolve to make their community more worthy of the Messiah, just in case he was there, whichever of them he was.

The monks began to tend the grounds of the monastery more carefully again. They began to repair the old buildings. They prayed more deeply, cared for one another more sincerely—and it was clear that once again, they were truly starting to feel and act like brothers.

And to their surprise, after a period of time, families began to arrive to walk the grounds on a Sunday. Some stayed for services in the chapel and said how moved they were by the singing of the monks. A local woman wrote seeking spiritual guidance for a challenging situation. One day, a young man arrived, asking if they thought he might be suited for the life of a monk.

And slowly, the monastery came alive again.

The monks in the folktale never told anyone what the rabbi had said about the Messiah.

If you ask me, that’s probably just as well. Was one of them the Messiah? Well, probably not.

But in a deeper sense, it’s clear that they did feel the presence of the Messiah among them once again. Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.

This transformed everything.

II.

And you know, it still transforms everything.

To me, that’s what makes this an Easter story.

Because I think we can draw a line from those monks all the way back to those two followers of Jesus who encountered the living reality of God as they walked on the road to Emmaus on the afternoon of that first Easter.

The two disciples didn’t recognize Jesus at first. Actually, they didn’t recognize Jesus for a good long while.

But when they finally did—when Jesus broke the bread and blessed it and their eyes were opened and they recognized him—when that happened, they realized that, of course, of course it was Jesus who had been with them.

They should have known.

It was almost like in the story, when the rabbi said, “Even now, the Messiah is among you.”

He was.

They should have known it by the way their hearts were set aglow…by the way their hearts burned within them as he spoke.

And that’s important.

Because that’s what it is to encounter God as a living reality. That’s what it is to encounter the Christ of Easter.

It is to have your heart set aglow, to have your heart start burning within you.

And the reason that the Church celebrates Easter is not simply because this encounter happened once, miraculous though that was.

The Church celebrates Easter because a line can be drawn from the two men on that dusty road straight to you and me.

We can draw that line from their hearts to ours.

It’s something that happens again and again—it’s the quiet heartbeat of all Creation.

We hear that heartbeat in all kinds of places – places far less likely even than the road to Emmaus.

Given the heartbreak of Good Friday; given the way that evil seemed to triumph over good; given the way that at the foot of the cross, hope seemed to fall short yet again—given all that, it’s understandable—even smart—that the first instinct of the two disciples was to run away from Jerusalem and from the other followers of Jesus as fast as possible.

We all know what it is to look around and feel like we can see the writing on the wall.

But on the road to Emmaus, the disciples encounter a new reality. They encounter the fact that the rules have changed. That God has changed the rules.

And so it is even now that when we hear—when we see—when we touch the love of God…when we sense the presence of the Jesus…in our own lives…we encounter that new reality for ourselves.

Our priorities shift, our attention focuses.

We begin to see beyond the horizon of our own needs, beyond our inclination to play it safe, beyond the temptation to settle for the obvious answers.

Our own capacity for love becomes intertwined with the living reality of God’s love.

That changes everything.

III.

Many of you know that two weeks ago, Liz and our girls and I went to visit family.

It was also our first opportunity to meet some new relatives.

My cousin P. and her husband K. have begun the adoption process for three siblings, truly lovely, joyful kids but with a wide spread in their ages and very different kinds of needs that flow from that.
It’s never easy to be a new parent, even for one new addition.

Imagine three.

Now imagine being the new parent of a near teen, a second grader, and a preschooler, all with the stroke of a pen and the purchase of a minivan.

Well, there’s actually a little more to the story.

Because two months into life as a new family, my cousin P.’s husband, K., became gravely ill. It came out of nowhere, and it’s been slow to resolve. It is the kind of illness that would have up-ended their old life. But you can imagine what it means now.

For my cousin, it means long days, and a tremendous burden that is hers to carry.

The kind of burden that all the help in the world can only ease but so much.

There are so many days that have been hard for her – harder than she ever thought possible

P. worries that she’s not cut out for this—that she just isn’t able to do everything the way she wants to, which is to say, she is frustrated that she cannot do everything perfectly.

But you know, perfection is not called for.

Because the heart that burns within her is so very clear.

Because seeing her with her new children, in all the chaos, confusion and complexity, you can hear it.

You can hear quiet heartbeat of Creation.

What was so clearly present in our time with our new family was not just the tremendous strength and courage of my cousin.

Somehow in it all, you could feel the love and presence of God.

Something sacred is happening. Jesus is there.

And as a pastor, I can tell you, there are so many people who can tell stories just like that.

IV.

The word “resurrection” comes from the Latin resurgere, from which we also get the word “resurgent.” But at its root the word resurrection means “to rise again.”

And so it is the Christian claim that, because Christ has risen again, his all-seeing faithfulness, his all-powerful love, and his ever-present hope are resurgent, even in the face of death.

And so it is in him that you and I and all Creation can find the power to rise again.

That’s what made those hearts burn on the road to Emmaus, on the late afternoon of that first Easter.

That’s what those monks rediscovered in that Russian monastery.

And I am here to testify that in so many places and so many ways, it’s what makes our hearts burn within us today.

Even within this dark and profoundly unsettled time, there are those who live in the light of a new reality.

Jesus is risen. But that’s not to say he’s far—it is to say that the Messiah is among us, even now.

He’s among us in the breaking of bread, in the breaking of all oppression, in the repair of the world.

Wherever life triumphs over death and diminishment. Jesus is there. Jesus is here.

He died, not so that he might enter heaven, but so that he might enter every human heart.

It’s happening even now. Even here.

Easter reminds us to open our eyes and recognize him.

 

Alleluia.

Has everyone here heard of the current popular singer Adele? Show of hands—have you heard of her?

If you haven’t heard of her, Adele is a mega-star, famous for her incredibly rich and sultry voice, but also for her songwriting, which includes a James Bond theme, but which tends to focus on very, very painful romantic breakups.

In fact, she’s so famous for her songs about lost love and being dumped that people have started rating their own past breakups as being a scale “between 1 and Adele.”

But what you need to know this morning is simply that she is a mega star who performs in big venues all around the world. She is one of those people who actually gets by in life with only having a first name.

So you may be surprised to learn that several months ago, the BBC put Adele up to taking part in a contest—a contest of Adele impersonators.

She was given a fake nose and chin and changed her hair a bit, and told everyone her name was Jenny, that her day job was being a nanny.

The other contestants complimented her on how much she looked like the real Adele—and many of them, of course, also looked like Adele.

She was nervous before going out in front of the judges—who were in on the whole thing.

The other contestants told her she’d be great. Nobody was catty or trying to intimidate anyone. In fact, once each contestant had sung her song, she sat in the audience to cheer on the other contestants.

So the real Adele went last.

Though the other singers only just met this new girl, Jenny, they cheered her on as she walked to the microphone.

The intro starts. She messes up. They pull for her as one of their own.

And within about two measures of Adele’s singing, one of the impersonators snaps back in her chair, as if she’s gotten an electric shock. Her eyes are as wide as saucers.

By the time Adele is halfway through the first verse, all of the other impersonators know that it’s the real Adele who is singing for them.

And they start singing the song right back at her. Many of them are crying.

Because of course, to them, she is so much more than a singer that they like and feel like they can resemble for fun and profit.

She feels like someone that they actually know.   Someone they can actually relate to. Someone who has been there when their own breakups and disappointments were all too real.

And so to meet her, to be with her, to have her singing right to them, was this deeply emotional moment.

II. 

I’m starting with that story this morning because it reminds me that there is such a deep difference between impressing people and inspiring them.

And that’s worth remembering on Palm Sunday because, in so many ways, it is the contrast between impressing people and inspiring them that lies at the heart of this day.

Palm Sunday is the day when Jesus enters Jerusalem, riding a donkey, and the crowds who are on their way up to the city for Passover celebrate him as a conquering hero, cheering him onward and throwing palms and branches before him to make him a highway.

It must have been something.

But it wasn’t impressive—and what can be hard to remember is that it wasn’t supposed to be.

I’ll come back to that in a moment.

What you also need to remember is that literally across the city, coming in one of the other gates that same day, would have been Pontius Pilate and a Roman legion, entering the city as conquerors there to remind the conquered—with all the theater of power that this entailed: gleaming uniforms, handsome horses, precise movements, and impeccable postures.

There arrival was designed to impress—to intimidate—and to remind the onlookers of their place in the world, which was to say, the Romans were there to remind the people that they didn’t have much of a place at all, unless Rome said so.

So when Jesus arrives, on the other side of town, slouched on a donkey, maybe wearing his hood to shield his head from the sun, almost like an invalid, well, there wasn’t much of the air of a conquering hero about him.

Not by Roman standards, anyway.

Yet it was a bold move, just the same, and the people loved him for it.

But more than that, I think Jesus genuinely inspired people.

And so, if some of the crowd on Palm Sunday was there cheering on Jesus because the whole thing seemed like a stunt, and that was fun, well…there were also plenty of others who were there because who Jesus was…the kind of world he talked about…the people he noticed…the people he loved…all mattered to them.

They were there because Jesus had given them language for something, maybe in the way that a song seems to give us language for something that we’d never quite had before.

Jesus inspired them, and that was absolutely real.

I like to think that maybe some of the Rich Man’s brothers had found their way into that crowd. And that the Prodigal Son was there with his older brother. That the Good Samaritan was there with the man he’d helped.

Or in any case, that some of the people who had heard those stories somewhere or other were there, and that they saw one another for the first time, and realized that they had something so important in common.

That they were almost family, even though they’d never met before then.

Because, of course, that’s what happens when we are inspired. We see connections that we hadn’t seen before. We feel drawn in.

There is a world of difference between finally finding your people and, once again, being put in your place.

And I think that’s why Jesus was so incredibly important to people even if they encountered him only briefly.

He represented the notion that our people—whoever it is, and whatever that means—is out there to be found. That, in God, who we really are will be revealed at last. And that God is searching for us even now.

It wasn’t about being impressive. It was about being authentic.

And that inspired people to change their lives. To drop everything and follow him. It inspired them to believe.

III.

Now, when you put it that way, it makes it sound as if Rome never had a chance.

That in the battle between impressing people and inspiring them, inspiration must always win.

Maybe in the end—at the very end—it must.

Maybe all those signs on water towers and billboards in the rural South that say “Jesus Saves” should get repainted to say “Jesus Wins.”

I believe he will.

And yet, maybe you agree with me that sometimes in our world, we Christians can start to sound as if we are more interested in impressing people than inspiring them, and that all too often, this does not help the cause.

We like to think that the choice is always clear.

The fact is, the choice is not clear at every moment in our lives.

As much as we may hunger for inspiration and hope to live in the light of what’s inspired us, we still have that side of us that longs to be impressed, and to impress.

The Romans paraded that way because it worked—and it still works.

Power and control speak to us in any number of ways, and in any number of contexts.

Part of us always longs to know our place in the scheme, and is willing to jockey for a better one, and that is not unimportant (although you’ll notice that I’m phrasing that carefully).

But the power of Jesus…what was so important about who he was…what he taught, was that he told us that the scheme was so much bigger than the Romans could ever understand.

The scheme was more than big enough for each and every one of us to have a place within it—and it was the kind of place that was worth having.

Sad to say, there were many in the crowd on that first Palm Sunday who would quickly forget that.

There were some who cheered Jesus as he entered Jerusalem, who a few short days later would cheer his death upon a cross just outside the city walls on the other side of town, not far from where the Romans had marched in.

But we can choose to remember.

We can choose to live our lives as people who were and are inspired. We can choose the path of Jesus.

That’s what Palm Sunday offers us. It’s a reminder of that choice—and a challenge to make it for Jesus again each day.

You and I may not be able to sing like Adele. (O.k., so Lisbeth can.)

But how we wear the graces we’ve been given makes just as big a difference.

How it is we live makes just as big a difference.

The choice is just as much before us.

What will be? The helmet or the palm?

May we seek the grace always to choose the palm.

 

Amen.

A few years ago, just after I came to Greenwich, I was called by a New York City wedding planner and told that I was being invited to interview for a celebrity wedding. The wedding was going to be out in the Hamptons the following August.

Now, truth be told, the wedding planner did not come out and say, “celebrity.” Instead, she said something more along the lines of, “a prominent couple,” or “a couple in the public eye,” or some other euphemism.

But however it was that she said it, I caught her drift.

Unfortunately, I was so curious about the “celebrity” part—however it was she put it—that I did not give much thought to the whole “you’ve been invited to interview” part.

That’s kind of a strange way to talk to a pastor.  We pastors like to think of ourselves as the ones doing the interviewing—trying to get a sense of a couple’s readiness for marriage, looking for signs that indeed, God has joined their lives.

But I was intrigued, and probably a little flattered, and so, off I went into New York for the day, wondering who the mystery couple might be.

So I’ll tell you the punch line now. I never did find out. In terms of the interview, I didn’t make it any further than the lobby of the wedding planner’s apartment building.

The whole interview was there in the lobby, and took less than ten minutes. She came with a list of questions.

Was I o.k. with wearing a suit instead of a robe? Did I have a double breasted suit?

Was I familiar with how to work with a videography team?

Was I o.k. with making the Apache Wedding Prayer a big part of the service?

I thought she was gearing up to confirm that I would sign a non-disclosure agreement, which would have been fine, but it never got to that, because I sank my whole adventure by asking my own question.

I was not trying to prove a point, but since we were talking logistics, then I thought it was important to ask when the couple and I would be able to meet for pre-marital counseling.

This stopped everything.

“I’m sorry, what?” asked the wedding planner.

I tried to explain. I wasn’t fishing for secrets. I was trying to help them come to terms with what it was to be joining lives.

Now, it should have seemed funny, of course, needing to explain pre-marital counseling to a wedding planner—to someone who plans weddings for a living, but these are strange times we live in, so I pressed ahead.

“Well, you know, in the Church, we see love as a holy mystery,” I began.

She cut me off.

“I can assure you that they are both highly spiritual people,” she replied, looking at me pointedly.

I could see that we were pretty much done.

Still, I kept at it.

But after another moment, the wedding planner cut me off again.

“Well, Mr. Grant,” she said, “I can see you’re very attached to your way of doing things. Thanks so much for your time.”

And that was that.

I probably should have seen it coming.

But what stayed with me was the window I had been given onto  a whole world I’d scarcely known existed—a world of handlers and assistants and multiple layers of insulation between people in the public eye and other people—those multiple layers that are put in place for their protection, for their best shot at privacy…or for maintaining a certain tone in their daily lives.

My glimpse into that world, brief as it was, made me feel like that could be a hard and very isolated way to live.

II.

On the other hand, this morning’s parable reminds us not to be too sympathetic.

It reminds us that, when push comes to shove, such a life wouldn’t be that hard.

After all, the way Jesus tells it, the Rich Man lives quite, quite well.

Indeed, he is leading a fairly contented life as a bold-faced name, living his days in a party-hearty kind of way, insulated by any number of layers from the rest of us, and from what we can tell, unrepentantly so.

What’s more, Jesus makes clear that this is especially insulated in the case of this rich man, because, at his very gates, underneath his very nose, we’re told there is a poor man, named Lazarus, who is suffering any number of indignities.

The fact that Lazarus is named in the parable, while the Rich Man is not, should tell us where Jesus’ own loyalties lie.

Lazarus’ sufferings are spelled out in aching detail. The only specifics we get about the Rich Man are about his fancy clothes, big meals, and front gate.

But then Lazarus and the Rich Man both die, and now the Rich Man is the one condemned to suffer. He looks up and sees Lazarus being comforted in heaven by Father Abraham.

The Rich Man hopes for mercy, just one finger dipped in cool water to ease the scorching heat of Hell for even a second, and yet, it probably comes as no surprise to us when he is told that a great chasm separates heaven and hell, and that any help from heaven is now impossible.

In life, you see, the Rich Man enjoyed the many layers of separation between him and the rest of the world—but it turns out that, in the process, he’s been digging his own eternal chasm, and now there is no way back.

And so part of what this morning’s parable wants us to ask ourselves is this: are we building bridges or digging chasms?

These are important questions for us.

III.

 

I can’t imagine anyone digs chasms on purpose.

But we do put layers between us and other people.

Sometimes, it’s important that we do.

For example, who hasn’t made the mistake of taking a cell phone call in the middle of a much-needed vacation, only to get pulled into something that could easily have waited?

Who hasn’t been at a party, seen someone in particular across the room, and felt like you just weren’t up for it on that particular night, and so made a particular point of steering clear?

Who doesn’t regret having been pushed to say yes to something, knowing we should have said no in the first place?

So let’s not suggest that layers between others and us are bad in all circumstances.

The problem is that if we’re not careful, those layers can start to seem all too good.

Returning to the parable, it isn’t that the Rich Man is cruel. It’s that he has become insensitive…or at least, desensitized. Maybe he always was. Maybe he has become so. The story does not specify.

However, much as the Rich Man enjoys his comfort in life, it is clear that ultimately, he pays for having removed himself from life, in general, and even as close as the life on his own doorstep.

He pays for having chosen to live in a kind of contentment that Jesus ultimately finds false.

The Rich Man pays for having placed so many layers of insulation between his life and the life of Lazarus…between his life and life in general.

And the great tragedy of it, of course, is that it did not have to be that way.

It was not supposed to be that way.

God wants something better for us.

What if, instead of digging chasms, we committed our lives to building bridges instead?

What if, instead of screening things out, we commit ourselves to being people who notice?

The story of the Rich Man is the story of someone who is literally hell-bent on preserving a very sad, superficial, and frankly, temporary way of living.

But a deeper, more joyous, and more enduring way is open to us.

So this week, the Gospel challenges us to notice. To reach out. To make time. To hear someone’s story. To start building a bridge.

The Gospel challenges us to pull away some of the layers we have put in place between our lives and the rest of the world, or at the very least, to notice them, and ask ourselves what it is we might be screening out, and missing out on.

The Gospel challenges us to remember that, throughout his ministry, Jesus us pointed us toward a day when all the gates would be thrown open—not simply the gates of every great house, but the gates of every human heart.

Jesus imagined a day when the great banquet would not be some gluttonous exercise in self-indulgence, but a feast that welcomed all people, where the greatest honor was not being the first one served, but the first to serve.

That was his way of doing things.

The question before us is if it will be ours, too.

Amen.