Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
April 9, 2023

Hope beyond Hope
Matthew 26:1-10

It started with just a little wobble.  The water in the glass on the bedside table sloshed from side to side, like someone had accidentally bumped it.  Maybe people rolled over in bed, changing positions before falling back to sleep.  Some opened their eyes wide, and sat up, adrenaline pumping.  Then, they say, there were three big shakes, windows shattering, bookshelves falling, ceiling crumbling overhead, while the earth rolled for almost a minute.  When it became still, the alarms started to wail – fire alarms, car alarms, ambulances and police – echoing through the city.  People began to make their way into the street, shivering with shock in the cold night air.  Terrified doesn’t begin to describe it.  But then, and this is the amazing thing to me, these people, these survivors – they turned to the houses and apartment buildings up and down their streets, houses and apartments that had collapsed into piles of rubble – people in the pajamas, in absolute shock, with their bare hands, they began to search for other survivors.  They dug through the rubble.  Moved concrete.  One woman who had been trapped up to her neck, buried alive in her own bedroom, was rescued by a neighbor who had nothing but a spoon for digging.[1]

Our news cycle has moved on from the devastating earthquakes that struck Syria and Turkey about 2 months ago.  But if you’ve been paying attention, you know that it was and is an incomprehensible tragedy.  More than 65,000 people were killed in the quake.  Entire towns were obliterated.  Thousands of children orphaned.  More than a million displaced.

An earthquake shakes and breaks; it takes the world as we know it and remakes it in mere minutes into something else entirely, an unrecognizable place.  Those who survive are forever changed, marked by the experience – haunted by it.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Not every quake is catastrophic.  Most aren’t, in fact – any resident of California can tell you that.  Some just unsettle us, reminding us the earth is not as stable as we like to imagine it to be.  It’s an eerie feeling, when the ground shifts under your feet.

In Matthew’s account of the crucifixion and resurrection, the earth itself shakes; first when Christ dies, and then again when the tomb is opened and found to be empty.  Total upheaval, both above and below.   An earthquake shifts the ground at Golgotha, causing the soldiers and the women gathered there to stumble.  Then, an earthquake shakes the ground again three days later, tectonic plates slipping and pushing away anything that would stand in God’s way, moving the stone from the mouth of the tomb.

Matthew tells us the earthquake on Easter is caused by an angel as bright as lightning, who lands and lounges on top of the stone.   Can you picture it?  and the guards, the men posted by Pilate to guard the tomb and protect the body, the guards are frozen with fear.  Terrified doesn’t begin to describe it.  Are they afraid of the earthquake, or the angel?  Both, maybe.  I think I would be too.  Remember that angels often greet people by telling them: Do not be afraid!  So they must be pretty terrifying.

I wonder what the women thought?  Weary and wary, they went as soon as they could to grieve at the grave of their friend.  Surely they were afraid of the soldiers, but their love for Jesus was greater than their fear.  Did they fall to the ground when the earth shook, did they shield their eyes and hide their faces as the angel settled on the stone?  And when they heard him speak, his unbelievable instructions to look in the tomb, to find it empty, and then to go and tell the others that Christ who was crucified has been raised – did they move right away?  Or were they frozen in place, blinking back tears, shivering with shock in the cold morning air?  Eventually they must have moved, screwed their courage to the sticking place and stooped to look, and found – nothing.  No body, even though they’d watched as he’d been laid there just two days prior.

Then, Matthew tells us, they left with fear and great joy, running to tell the others.  Fear and great joy!  Sounds like a description of awe to me – a sense of mystery and wonder at something that we don’t understand.  Somehow, the ground has shifted beneath their feet!  After all, an earthquake shakes and breaks; it takes the world as we know it and remakes it in mere minutes into something else entirely.  We who witness the awesome power of God are forever changed, marked by the experience.  Resurrection!  Could it be true?  Do we dare to believe it?  And if we do, what difference does it make for us?  For the world?

I listened to a conversation between Dacher Keltner and Krista Tippett recently.  Keltner is a neuroscientist at Berkeley, a pioneer in the study of human emotions, who lately has focused on the experience of awe; that is: a sense of mystery and wonder that transcends our understanding, and calms our minds and bodies –  regulating our heartbeats, decreasing cortisol, smoothing out our nervous system, boosting our immune system, and bringing us in sync with those around us.[2]  Through his research, he discovered what causes us to experience awe.  He found that more than anything else; more than being in nature, more than practicing religion, what leads people to feel awe most often is … other people.  Specifically, an experience of the moral beauty of others: kindness, courage, strength, or overcoming obstacles.  When we witness ordinary people doing amazing things, our breath catches in our throats, our eyes tear up.  We are, for a moment, overcome.

I am overcome thinking about the courage of those women, the Marys.  Terrified by the soldiers who killed their friend, shaken by an earthquake, greeted by an angel, and brave enough to run to tell the others what they’ve seen and heard.  In their awe, they meet the risen Christ along the way!  Through their courage, we, too, have witnessed resurrection!  We have seen our Lord!

I am overcome thinking about the survivors in Turkey.  Feet jammed into shoes, jackets thrown over jammies, shivering with shock, yet still digging through rubble with their bare hands to help their neighbors who have been buried alive.  We have witnessed resurrection.

I am overcome thinking about the brave legislators in Tennessee, Representatives Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson, and Justin Pearson.  Have you been paying attention to what’s happening there?  Three representatives protested the legislature’s refusal to act following the school shooting in Nashville, and their colleagues didn’t just censure them – they voted to expel two of them, the two black men, the Justins, from their body completely.  Seeking to silence their advocacy for peace, and preventing their constituents, the people of Memphis, from having representation in the statehouse.  But they will not be silenced.  If anything, their voices have been amplified by what has happened, there is hope yet that schools and neighborhoods might be made safe for children again through common sense gun reform.  Their courage, their refusal to back down has inspired awe.  They are ordinary people doing amazing things.

Ordinary people do amazing things at Faith Church.  You do it all the time.  You care for one another.  Celebrate each other, mark milestones with much rejoicing.  You speak out against violence and keep vigil through the night.  You sing and pray with each other, and for our city, our hurting world.  You share what you have so that others might have enough.  You break bread together and welcome all who are hungry to feast.  You light candles, you double and triple check to make sure they are blown out.  You come early, very early some days, you stay late.  You wash dishes, you clean up, you put out chairs, you break down tables, you carry water, you bring spices to prepare the body.  You sit with each other through grief.  And in doing these things, even if you are sometimes afraid, you are, I hope, sometimes also surprised by joy. And inspired by the courage of those around you.

The good news of this Easter day is that despite the persistence of death, the prevalence of violence, the pain and the suffering of this world, there was a time when death did not win.  When the violence of empire was undone by the tenacity of love.  When the worst thing was not the last thing.  When courageous women and men inspired awe in all who heard and believed and shared the truth of resurrection – the earth shaking power of God to bring forth life from the tomb, to resurrect, to revive, and renew, to remake the world as we know it in an instant.

The old ways of the world are dying, and new ones are being born.  It is awesome.  And I thank God that ordinary people like those women, like you and me, get to be part of it.  And so let’s go, and tell the world: Christ is risen – he is risen indeed.

[1] I read many accounts from survivors in articles from the BBC and World Vision’s coverage of the earthquakes and their aftermath to create this section.

[2] Tippett, Krista interviewing Dacher Keltner in “Dacher Keltner and the Thrilling New Science of Awe,” On Being podcast, 2/2/23, https://onbeing.org/programs/dacher-keltner-the-thrilling-new-science-of-awe/#transcript

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore
April 2, 2023

To the Streets!
Matthew 21:1-11

Hosanna!  Hosanna!  It is ringing in my ears from our joyful parade this morning.  Let’s say it again – Hosanna!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  You probably know that Hosanna is an old Aramaic word that means, “Save us!” or Help us, we pray!

I usually think of parades as joyful events – community convergences, with music and street food, marching bands and kids on shoulders and dogs.  We went to the lantern parade at Patterson Park last fall, and it was happy mayhem – people were carrying lanterns of all shapes and sizes, some purchased but many handmade, interspersed with giant glowing puppets, and people fluttering beautiful lighted butterfly wings, mariachis, kids in wagons, and guys on stilts.  The parade is a celebration of twinkling lights, pushing back at the darkness as the days grew cold and short moving into winter.

But parades aren’t always festive.  Sometimes people go out to the streets to march for change, or to draw attention to a problem that needs collective action.  Sometimes they are public demonstrations of anger, or collective outpourings of grief.  Sometimes, a parade is performance art, or a protest.

Two Fridays ago, the survivors of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting went to Washington, D.C.  They weren’t there to see the cherry blossoms, or the memorials or to visit the Smithsonian.  They went to set up a display on the National Mall – 1100 body bags, black on the lawn under overcast skies.  They were protesting the impasse in Congress around gun control – the refusal of Republican legislators to even consider common sense gun laws, despite the fact that firearms are now the leading cause of death for children and youth in this country. The 1100 body bags, lined up on the grass, spell out “Thoughts and Prayers” – Each bag standing for more than 150 people killed by gun violence, so 170,000 total, in the four years since they started their work to call for national gun laws.[1]  Hosanna.

Two years ago, I preached about the March for Our Lives on Palm Sunday, remembering Emma Gonzales holding seven minutes of silence for their fallen classmates.  Hosanna.

Today, they’re on my mind and in my heart again.  Because six people, we know, were shot and killed just last Monday at a private school in Nashville: two teachers, the principal, and three students – one of them a third grader, just the same age as Maddie – 9 years old – a preacher’s kid, too. That tragedy caught national attention, but there were ten people killed on the mean streets of Baltimore in the past two weeks alone.  Hosanna.

The body bag installation calls our attention to the ongoing heartache caused by gun violence in our country.  A largely preventable massacre that demands more than just thoughts and prayers, it demands public action.  Hosanna.

Fred Craddock says that we can understand the Palm Sunday procession, with Jesus making his way into Jerusalem on a donkey, streets lined with cheering peasants, throwing their cloaks and branches into the road- we can understand it in three ways: as a parade, a protest, and a funeral procession.

When a Roman general returned from war, he would charge through the city gates in a chariot led by prancing white horses.  He would lead his garrison of soldiers through the city, directly to the temple to sacrifice to the gods – it was a victory parade that flaunted the military power of Rome in the face of the peasants who were forced to fund it.  Hosanna.

Jesus’s procession turns this tradition upside down.  He enters the city like a conquering hero, and the crowds call him their King… but he arrives on a donkey, just as the prophet Zechariah predicted the savior would come.  When he arrives in Jerusalem he goes straight to the temple – but not to make a sacrifice.  Instead, he goes to throw out the merchants and moneylenders, to protest those who were preying on poor people at the very heart and home of the Jewish community.  Hosanna.  This victory parade is a stunt that provokes the religious leaders, who are already looking for a way to have him killed.

It’s hard to say if this is what his disciples, the ones who called him king, expected him to do.  It’s hard to say if that is what the crowds expected from him, either.  Can you picture them, lining the streets, waiting in the sun to catch a glimpse of him?  I’m sure some came out of curiosity – they’d heard of his miracles and wanted to see who had raised a man from the dead.  Some came for healing, because rumor was he could cast out evil with just a word.  Some came for revolution, because he was the anointed one, who would conquer their oppressors once and for all.  Some came because they’d met him, they’d heard him preach, and they knew he was the savior they’d been waiting for.  They all looked at the man on the donkey and shouted, HOSANNA!  Save us!

This week we remember that their palms and cheers turned to taunts and jeers and a call for crucifixion by Friday.  Hosanna.

It’s not so hard to believe, given how quickly public opinion changes these days.  It’s not so hard to believe, as we live in a Good Friday world, where death is unavoidable.  Where schools aren’t safe, where life is all too fragile, where thoughts and prayers are offered instead of policy and change. Hosanna.

But friends, look around.  Take heart in all those gathered here this morning.  Our witness is important.  Because in the midst of the violence and the pain and the brokenness of our world, Christ came! Christ came with a parade, a protest, a procession, with happy mayhem.  Christ came and shared the love of God our creator; Christ came, and showed us the way out of the graves that we dig for ourselves and into new life.  This week, I invite you to join us as we follow Jesus. We will see his love made real around a table with friends and remember his love even unto death in our service on Thursday night.  The testimony of this holy week is that Jesus does whatever it takes to heal, to save, and to free us from the powers of sin and death.

So I hope today, as we celebrate Bill’s 100 years of life and look back at 100 years of Faith Church’s work and witness, as we move into this holiest of weeks, we’ll ask, what do we expect?  Is our witness a parade?  A celebration of our savior?  Is it a protest, a public demonstration for love and justice in a hurting world?  I hope it’s not a funeral procession for the church that was, but rather a parade heralding the church we are becoming. Today, may we all shout Hosanna: blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.  Hosanna!

[1] https://marchforourlives.com/thoughtsandprayers/