Welcome to the Sermons from Christ Church Needham Blog

We hope you enjoy this archive of sermons preached at Christ Church in Needham, Massachusetts.

For more information, please visit our website at www.ccneedham.org.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Easter Day - Skip Windsor

Colossians 3:1-4

A Happy Thing

O God, open our hearts to your word – a word that passes swiftly and faithfully from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the life. Amen.

A grandmother told me not too long ago about the time she took her five-year old grandson for the first time to a carwash. As the car entered the enfolding darkness, sprayed with brightly colored soaps, soaked with high pressure hoses, and blasted with drying fans, the grandson looked up at his grandmother with a worried look and asked, “Grandma, is this a happy thing?”

Is this a happy thing?” I think these words may capture something of what the first disciples were thinking when Mary burst into the upper room and told them that the tomb of Jesus was empty. At first, they may have thought it a bad thing until they received different messages and came to realize for themselves that this was indeed a happy thing.

Easter is a happy day because you and I celebrate a happy thing: Jesus lives! Today is the celebration of our hope in Jesus Christ. The faith of the Christian Church is dependent upon the resurrection. All hinges on the belief that “Christ is risen”. To be clear it was St. Paul who used the words, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain,” expressing the belief shared by all the earliest Christians.

Each Gospel tells a different resurrection story and each writer gives it his own particular slant. Angels, earthquakes, strange appearances, missing bodies all mark the events of the empty tomb. Our reading selection from John’s Gospel today renders a vivid account of fits and starts, running and stopping, love and loss, recognition and mistaken identity. It is a gripping narrative. It is grand story telling; but is it real?

Did Mary actually meet a gardener? Does it matter whether Peter and John actually saw Jesus’ linens folded neatly into two piles in the tomb? What matters, I think, is that Mary, Peter and John left behind their old lives, their frightened selves and became a transformed people. Somehow, in an odd and mysterious way, the resurrection of Jesus was not just about him. Rising from the dead was not done as some selfish act of God to liberate God’s son.

The resurrection of Jesus was about, and for, Mary, Peter, John and all the disciples. No longer was Jesus a “he:” some separate entity distanced from them. Now, Jesus became part of them. He and they were as one: still separate persons but intensely and mysteriously unified. “No longer,” as St. Paul writes, “do I live but the Christ within me.”

The late Peter Gomes of Harvard’s Memorial Church writes that you and I are called to be “Easter Christians.” We are to put off and set aside the old life and put on Christ. We are to put away anger, wrath, malice, and slander and to put on kindness, humility, and compassion. Gomes is realistic enough to note such biblical mandates come with a sobering reproach:

The great trick in our intellectual world is to think of something we want to do and then imagine it to be so impossible as not to be able to do it which relieves us of the responsibility of trying to do it.” Gomes believes that these attributes of wholeness, integrity and authenticity are waiting to be summoned forth so that we can walk a new life as a resurrected people.

In our epistle lesson for today from Colossians, the apostle Paul writes, we are to take off the old and put on the new.

I am reminded of the story told by the Christian author, Max Lucado, called “Take it off? Take it all off.” It is the story Bob, who was born into the land of coats and was persuaded by various people to wear a variety of coats, depending upon which color of coat they were wearing themselves.

Bob got so good at changing coats so swiftly, depending upon whom he was with, that he became very popular. But, one day, Bob met a man who wore no coat, and who advised him to take off all his coats and “let the world see who you truly are.” So Bob was left to ponder the question, “Take them off? Take them all off?”

The advice of the man in the story is the same advice Paul offers in his Epistle to the Colossians. Using his words from another biblical translation called The Message,

Paul writes: “If you are serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with things right in front of you. Look up and be alert to what is going on around Christ – That’s where the action is. See things from his perspective. Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life – even though invisible to spectators – is with Christ in God. Christ is your real life” (Col. 3:1-4).

To take seriously the resurrection of Jesus is to see our lives differently. To paraphrase the poet Emily Dickinson we are to see it slant. To live into this new life in Christ, which may be invisible to others, is to seek a change of consciousness from being merely observers of an unfolding story but participants in the continuing narrative of salvation.

In the beginning God created the world to have a relationship with creation. This love was to become visibly manifested; and this love was shown most exquisitely through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God took this risk to love; and the resurrection is God’s invitation to us to take the same kind of risk of love in our lives today.

Resurrection is not written in books alone. We are eyewitnesses to it everyday:

We see resurrection when one small black Anglican bishop and a long imprisoned man say no to apartheid and dismantle a country of oppression re-creating a new world of liberation and justice.

We see resurrection in the rescue of 33 entombed Chilean miners who were buried alive for 69 days

Resurrection is known when the organs of a brain dead man are given to three people who are able to live now because of him.

I see resurrection in the hopeless face of a Haitian girl who thought she would never walk again but brightens as she takes her first steps because of the compassion and ingenuity of a physical therapist

I see resurrection in a terminally ill woman who spends the remaining days of her life teaching a special needs boy how to live with strength and courage by her own brave example of compassion.

I see resurrection in a lost boy who was bewildered and beleaguered by drugs and alcohol that died to his old self and lives now a new life by selflessly serving his country.

Resurrection is about experience as much as it is about belief. Signs of resurrection surround us daily if we have the eyes to see. Easter is not a past event but is the event of our lives.

At Easter, you and I rediscover that behind the universe is a God who brings love, hope, and promise to everyone. Death is not the end because Christ is risen. In this sure knowledge, you and I live not just with a hope but live in the Body of Hope with the one we call Savior: Jesus Christ.

This is a happy thing – a very happy thing!

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Maundy Thursday - Holly Hartman

On Maundy Thursday, we at Christ Church practice the ancient ritual of foot washing.
You can see in your bulletin that you’ll have the opportunity to participate in this right after this
homily. If you choose. I hope you do choose.

Why do we do this? Presumably, we want to emulate Jesus. The humility, love, and act of
service that Jesus displayed when he surprised his disciples during their Last Supper together to
perform this act.

At first, the disciples bristled. “You will NEVER wash my feet”, Peter says. But Jesus
admonishes him that unless he allows this humble, pious act to occur, then Peter will “have no
share” with Jesus.

Most of us, bristle, too, when it comes to foot washing. “You will NEVER wash my feet”, we
think or even say out loud, when it is offered on Maundy Thursday. Feet are smelly, ugly, dirty.
It’s awkward. It’s embarrassing. It’s uncomfortable. Instead of identifying with Jesus, we
identify with Peter in this story. Peter was embarrassed to have Jesus, his master, treat him as if
the roles were switched and Jesus was the servant instead. Jesus’ message was to reassure Peter
that there is no greater or lesser person in the eyes of God. Everyone can serve, and everyone
can be served.

I am certainly not going to shame you into having your feet washed tonight, or even try to
convince you. But I do want to share a story with you that changed my own feelings about foot
washing.

A few years ago, I was in Haiti on a mission trip with some members of my sponsoring church,
St. Paul’s in Dedham. It was October of 2008, and our trip took place just after a series of
powerful hurricanes had afflicted the country. I was walking to church on a Sunday morning,
along the unpaved road in the rural village of Juampas. With me were three young adult Haitian
friends- Jothson, Pascal, and Kerline. All three of these people are very close to my heart. They
speak English quite well, and always serve as our translators many times. I have been a guest at
their homes.

The dirt roads were full of big ruts, and there was mud everywhere. We were all dressed up for
church, but I was wearing sneakers because I knew I couldn’t navigate those ditches and mud
puddles without them. Kerline, however, a beautiful 21 year old woman, adeptly negotiated
around the ruts in her high heels.

We came to a place in the road that was covered with water. In order to continue on, we had to
walk from rock to rock in the puddles. My friends held my hands, but I still managed to slip off

a rock and land in the water. With mud up to my ankles, now, I wondered how I could ever make
it to church.

My young friends laughed at my plight, and without a word, brought me over to the nearest
house- a hut, in our standards. As if pre-planned, a homemade cane chair appeared in the yard,
and they sat me down. Kerline took my shoes off and headed over to a pump to wash them.
Jothson went to fetch a bucket of water, and seeing my distress, patted my shoulder, laughing,
telling me not to worry. Before I knew it, my young friend Pascal was washing my feet. As he
squatted down and tenderly wiped the mud off each foot, I said to him “Pascal….you remind
me of Jesus.”

You see, I thought I was there to serve the Haitians, and in true biblical reversal of roles, the
Haitians were serving me.

Having your feet washed is not a comfortable thing. Washing someone else’s feet is equally as
disconcerting. So, why do we do it on Maundy Thursday?

We do it, of course, to remember that Jesus commanded his disciples to love one and serve one
another. The act of washing their feet before they ate their last supper together was the most
humble way he could demonstrate the radical love and desire to serve them that he had. John
13:1 ? tells us that Jesus “showed them the full extent of his love.”

We, too, are to love and serve each other

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Palm Sunday - Lynn Campbell

Mt 21:1-11, Philippians 2:5-11, Mt 27: 11-54

Today, Palm Sunday, we begin again. Whatever your Lent has been, this is now Holy Week, the most sacred week of the Christian year. We are invited to make the choice to enter more deeply into the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem and ultimately to the cross. We are called to let go of our fears and our false loves and to instead walk with Jesus in his suffering.

Offering any reflection on Holy Week, especially after the reading of the Passion narrative, is a daunting task. How can words ever adequately reflect the mystery of Jesus’ death on the cross? For me this is a time in which words fail to satisfy. I think our Church, in her wisdom, also knows this to be true. So, on this Holy day and during this Holy week, we are offered other ways – a liturgical path – on which to enter into the great Mystery of our faith.

We are embodied people and we need external signs to help us take in the importance of this Sunday and the importance of this truly Holy Week.

As you walked into the sanctuary this morning, you knew something was different. The altar hangings have changed from the purple of Lent to this beautiful deep red, we were given palms to hold, and we have palms rather than flowers on the high altar. The liturgy even started in a way that is different from any others.

And the scriptures, the stories for this day. We don’t just hear them. We experience them. We move quickly from the passionate and hopeful shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” to the condemning shouts of “Let him be crucified!” Palm Sunday always gives me the feeling of emotional and spiritual whiplash. I can never seem to make sense of the shift from Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem to his death on the cross. But in my confusion, I can imagine how extraordinarily difficult it was for Jesus -- how painful, how horrible -- to reconcile that his journey had come to this.

We don’t just think about this journey in our minds or our words. We come to know this reality with our bodies. The Church offers us ways to enter more fully into this Mystery of Jesus passion and death. We do this later in the week with the liturgies of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. In the powerful liturgy of Maundy Thursday we remember the Last Supper shared with Jesus and his disciples. And as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, we will wash one another’s feet as a symbolic act of love and service to our sisters and brothers.

On Good Friday, through Scripture, prayer, and music, we will meditate on the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus. We will sit still, grieving, scared, with Jesus who, in the words from today’s letter of Paul to the Philippians, “emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

Holy Week is not like every other week. Life is different this week. We intentionally journey with Jesus, in our prayer and in our actions, to the darkness of the grave. Perhaps you will do this through attending the Holy Week liturgies this week or maybe through your own prayer and meditation with Scripture. Whatever path you choose, please choose one. Allow your heart to be transformed by the humility and obedience of Jesus to the will of God. Empty yourself of those things that keep you from walking with Jesus. Open yourself to become a new creation.

As Christians we know that death does not have the last word. We know that love overcomes fear and the life is victorious over death. But we cannot experience this new life and love without journeying with Jesus to the cross. May God be with us on the journey.