http://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/42813-consider-it-take-counsel-and-speak-out.mp3

Why in the world is this story in the Bible?

And why are we reading it in a worship service?

A man taking a concubine, angering her then trying to win her back, schmoozing with the girl’s father and regaining the girl, needing a place to stay and being given no hospitality, taken in by an old man who at first appears to be a god-send.  A mob pounding on the door demanding a body to abuse, the old man now only concerned with protecting one of his guests, and himself.  The girl being seized and thrown out to pacify the mob, which unleashes its brutality against her.  And finally, a breaking apart of the abused body, each part sent out as a gruesome message to the different tribes of Israel.

Let me ask again: Why in the world is this story in the Bible? Of all the stories Israel could have told about its history, its identity, its coming to be as a people, why include this one?  And dare we remember it and contemplate it in church?

Let me ask the question another way: What if this story wasn’t in the Bible?  What if something like this had actually happened – one, or a thousand times – and did not get told.  What if these kinds of stories were silenced, edited out of the official records, swept neatly under the rug in the attempt to convince the world that the house is clean and there is nothing to see here, nothing wrong here.  If this story wasn’t in the Bible, wasn’t a part of the official memory of the people of Israel, wasn’t in front of our face, would these kinds of brutally painful stories just go away?

For the last number of years we have chosen to observe Blue Sunday, the…

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“Snatch” isn’t a word I use all that often.  I’m not sure why, because now that I’ve thought about it a bit, it’s a pretty great word.  It’s one of those words that sounds like what it means.  It’s abrupt, snatch, over before you realize what just happened.  But that S and N at the beginning sound like someone has been plotting for a while.  Sneaky, like a snake.  And then the atch.  Once the premeditated sneaker reaches the desired object, things happen quick, Sssnnn-atch, grab, grasp, latch on and it’s gone.  Too fast to catch.  It just got snatched.

Snacks get snatched around our house by little, and big hands.  We’re probably not the only house of sneaky snack snatchers.  Our girls do need to work on covering their tracks with the plenty of incriminating evidence they leave behind, like ladders in the pantry, opened wrappers on the table, and chocolate on the face.  True story, during Lent Lily said that she was going to give up sneaking.  It was a vow not well kept, but Lent is all about forgiveness.

Snatch is a word that Jesus uses twice in this passage in John.  Maybe the Aramaic word also sounds like what it means.  Jesus is having another of those heated confrontations with the religious leaders, who have asked him to stop beating around the bush and tell them whether or not he is the Messiah.  So, Jesus starts talking about sheep.  Specifically, sheep that hear his voice and sheep that don’t.  Jesus’ sheep hear his voice.  He knows them and they follow him, Jesus says.  He gives them eternal life, and they will never perish.  Then the bits about snatching.  “No one will snatch them out of my hand.  What my Father has given me…

“After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples.”  John 21:1

For all intents and purposes, Easter is over.  Not only is it not Easter anymore, it’s not even the Sunday after Easter, when the glow from the early morning encounter of the empty tomb is still lingering.  Easter break is over and kids are back to school.  Adults are back to work.  The Easter egg that Grandpa hid especially well and then forgot where it was when total eggs found didn’t quite add up to total eggs hidden, is out of sight and out of mind.  Maybe someone will find it in July if it starts to smell bad enough in the summer heat.

But the church does a tricky thing to us, declaring the entire time between Easter morning and Pentecost Sunday, May 19, to be included in the season of Easter.  All seven weeks of it.  Resurrection will not go away easily.

The passage from John 21 appears to be something of an appendix to John’s telling of the gospel.  Jesus has been crucified, is risen, appears to Mary, then the male disciples as they huddle behind locked doors.  Then he appears again to finish up business, this time with Thomas in the room, absent for the first appearance, unable to take his friends’ word for it.  John chapter 20 ends this way: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”  Start the music and roll the credits, the show is over.

Because of this apparent ending, and because of some stylistic differences in John 21, scholars…

Christ is risen!  Christ is risen indeed!

I recently came across a short quote that goes like this:

“If we wish to quench our thirst, we must lay aside books which explain thirst and take a drink.” (Jean Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence)

For this Easter morning we could modify this slightly and say, If we wish to know resurrection, we must lay aside books which explain resurrection, and experience it for our ourselves.

But this puts us in a bit of a difficult situation.  Our Bible, the book of books, is the central witness we have for the resurrection.  This year we hear from Luke’s account of the events on Easter morning.  On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women come to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared.  But they find the stone rolled away, with no body.  Instead, they encounter two men in dazzling clothes who say to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has risen.”  This is what it says in the good book, but this is hardly an explanation for resurrection.  It’s more the reverse.  Resurrection is the explanation for Jesus’ body not being in the tomb.  The women, who were initially terrified, leave the tomb and tell the other apostles.

I admit that it’s right about this time of year that I go digging around in books to be reminded of some of the things that have been written about resurrection – explanations always welcome.  One of these books that I appreciate is called The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions.  The two visions of Jesus are provided by Marcus Borg and NT Wright, both top Bible and religion scholars and both deeply committed Christians.  Marcus Borg comes at things…