Christ Lutheran Church: Welcome

Easter Under the Caribou Tree - April 5, 2007

Easter Under the Caribou Tree

Maundy Thursday

April 5, 2007

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

On my day off this week (that is, the one day off I am allowed off each week ....if there are no funerals or crisis calls or special services or semons to develop), I was waiting for Ann to join me for dinner at Ridgedale.  I had a couple hours to wait, and since I had seven services to design for this week, I got a cup of coffee at the Caribou kiosk and turned around to work on my computer at this little single table under a tree.  Wrong.  The couple in front of me got that one.  And therein lies the tale.

Apparently God did not want me to have two hours to myself under the Caribou tree to work on the Good Friday service.  The only table that was available was right next to another empty table.  Since both tables were empty, I though I'd give it a try.  It worked!  For six whole minutes...until this other couple sits down as my new neighbors.  THAT was OK...until the wife departs to go shopping, which leaves the hubby sitting right next to me with no one else to talk to BUT me.  And since he could tell that I was working really hard on something, he knew this would be a really good time to chat.  For two hours.  Until my computer battery ran out.

But as soon as I got over the idea that I would now get no sleep tonight, I found this guy and his wife to be really enjoyable people.  We had the best conversation ever.  Turns out that his fifty-something couple is not Christian.  Like me they were holdovers from the sixties.  In fact, he at least was really hostile and cynical about religion in general.  All you have to do, he was telling me, is look at the Muslim terrorists and the Christian fundamentalists.  He told me how Clint Eastwood got it right in a recent interview when he said that the problem is when any group thinks they know what God thinks.  THAT, he said, is what causes all the problems these days.

Now, I have to say in my defense, that this buy never asked me what I did for a living.

So I replied that I disagreed with Clint Eastwood.  I told him that in my opinion, the problem is not when some group thinks it knows what God thinks, but when that group presumes the right to ram it down someone else's throat.  "For example," I said, "I happen to be a Christian pastor who believes that Jesus knew what God was thinking."

I thought that maybe this revelation would finally get me the privacy I wanted.  In fact, it really did get kind of quiet there for a few seconds.  Then the guy recovers his breath from the coffee that went down the wrong pipe and says, "Well, I hope you're not one of those fundamentalists."

"No," I replied, "but I AM pretty theologically conservative."  Silence again.  In the silence I added, "You see, I think that Jesus was pretty clear that He was the only way to the Father, but He never forced that opinion on anybody.  He actually let people walk away from Him all the time.  In fact, I don't think Jesus ever manipulated anybody even subtly."

"Well, yeah, but look at all the wars that have been fought in His name," the guy challenged.

"Yes, but never BY Him," I answered.

Then I really took the guy by surprise when I said, "You know only Moslem killers are being faithful to their leader.  Christian extremists are not."

He sputtered on his coffee a second time:  "WHAT?!!"

"Well," I explained, "their faith was founded by a military conqueror.  So was Judaism, for that matter.  But Christianity was founded by a loser."

"You said you were a CHRISTIAN pastor?  And you think that Jesus was a loser?"

So I explained how Jesus was a loser in the power values of THIS world, in political and military terms.  He got himself executed and without a fight.  Then all but one of His apostles were executed.  I explained that our religion was incubated in the Coliseum of Rome.  Ours is a tradition of martyrs who, unlike Moslem terrorists today, did not die as a result of killing others, but simply died by refusing to harm even their enemies.

I told my friend that this week we are celebrating Holy Week and the very next thing we were preparing to celebrate is called Maundy Thursday.  I told him how this was the night that Jesus allowed Himself to be arrested.  And when His chief apostle drew his own sword to defend Jesus and lopped off the ear of one of the arresting party, Jesus wheeled on Peter and rebuked him, told Peter to put away the sword and then healed the injured man.

I agreed that countless of Jesus followers have shed the blood of others in the name of Jesus, but Jesus never did.  As a Christian pastor I worship Jesus, not Christianity.  What sets Christianity apart from the other big faiths where it comes to violence, is that only our founder surrendered at the cost of His life.  No other faith can be held accountable to such foundations.

There is only one reason why Jesus could dare surrender.  It was because He knew that His death was necessary in order to end death...on the day when He would rise again to nullify the permanence of death and the God-awful sin that drives people to harm one another out of fear and self advancement.

"Hmmmmm...." my new friend said.  "Never thought of it that way."  It just occurred to me that maybe this week will be the resurrection to eternal life for my two new friends.

And now I think I might know why God did not want me to have two hours to myself under the Caribou tree.