What do we bury?

Today we emphasize the joy of anticipation of God's final actions for us; and on Sunday we point out the utter seriousness and costliness of his gifts to us, and we do not talk about one without the other in mind.

As we contemplate this episode, the burial of Jesus, we might imagine the mix of thought and emotion that the disciples were carrying.

On the one hand—profound sorrow at the death of their Messiah and friend;

but on the other hand, perhaps also a twinge of relief that no one would now be questioning Peter's denial, or the quick scatter and hide tactic they used when the troops came for Jesus.

Yes, perhaps they were a little bit glad to bury some of those things.

We, too, would like to bury some things about our actions, words, and thoughts.

We would like to bury them so deep that they cannot foul us any more.

We'd like them so deep that no one else can locate them and torment us with them.

We'd like them so far away that God can't connect them to us.

--There is all of our shoddy faith, and shabby quarrels about who is the greatest;

--there are our petty jealousies and impatience.

--There are the terrible ways in which we treat each other,

and think that God either doesn't know or doesn't care.

And then there are all those ways in which we deny or betray Jesus.

--Like Peter, we say, “I do not know the man.”

--Like Thomas, we say, “Prove who you are.”

--Like all the disciples we run away in the difficult times.

--Like Augustine as a young man, we dabble in all sorts of philosophies and schemes and try to avoid the First Command: You shall have no other gods.

We'd rather that things like this be hidden from our companions, ourselves, and God.

But we who try to bury things out of sight eventually discover that we are the ones to be buried.

We have to deal with grief and disillusionment and death.

We must do it.

In the usual way of looking at things, death is life at an end.

But because we know that Resurrection Day is coming shortly,

--we have come to know that God acts through suffering and sorrows of all sorts,

--We have come to know that God will take all of the things about ourselves that we thought had been buried

and transform them and us.

--We have come to know that the death we thought was finality

is instead the opportunity for God to connect us with the great wonder of Christ's new life.

God proves his love for us, Paul says,

in that while we were still sinners,

Christ died for us.

For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.

If that is true, then the things that we bury are quite different than they have been.

Instead of the endless jockeying for position that we tend to do, we can lay that aside and remember that Jesus became the servant, who was not afraid to wash feet, figuratively and actually.

We need to care for the various possessions that are entrusted to us, but when we are buried with worry about them, then our care has been twisted into worship of the wrong things.

We'd like to bury all of the right judgments that God makes about us.

None of us enjoy being reprimanded.

But this is not God's vindictiveness or pettiness, but rather his desire to turn us around.

So instead, let us bury our resentment and listen again to the voice that calls us to listen and follow after the Lord Jesus.

In the midst of the storm, the sailors thought they were getting rid of bad luck by tossing Jonah into the raging sea.

On that Good Friday late afternoon, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus thought they were burying all their hopes and dreams of Messiah when they rolled the stone in front of the grave.

But it turns out that they were only fulfilling the actions that needed to happen so that the greater promises of God would be fruitful.

May it be the same for us!

May God use our actions – our faithful ones and even the ones which we know are less than great – as pointers to his kingdom breaking in and to our Lord Jesus, the Messiah.

For in the mercy and wonder of God, even that which is buried will be transformed, in the name of Christ.

Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.