Easter Vigil

Ok lets just be honest with one another.  Let’s acknowledge that this part of Luke’s Gospel was most likely, or should I say, most definitely written by women.  Peter’s behavior is a metaphor of the typical male, psyche, and ego.  It still often seems appropriate today…I can hear my bride say….go see for yourself if you don’t believe me!  You see even that Gospels have some humor built into them for us to enjoy.
Now as Paul Harvey would say “is the rest of the story”:
Have you ever discerned or made a decision that disappointed significant people in your life?  Have you ever made a decision that disappointed yourself?
Decisions like what college to attend.  What career path to take?  What career path to leave?  What job to take and what job to leave? Who to date and who to not?  Who to marry and who to let go of? When to hang on to an heirloom and when to let it go?  What you will be in life and what you won’t be because of the previous decision?

I’d like to invite you to remember one of those decisions in your life…as significant as possible.  How did you feel?  What did you worry about?
What did you do to lessen the impact on others?  What did you try to do to avoid the pain?
Now think about this…Jesus was the biggest disappointment ever.  So we who have had to disappoint someone, or who have disappointed someone by our decisions that we had to make…we are in good company.
You see Jesus was a disappointment to his followers, who even though he had told them several times, how this whole thing was going to go down, still chose to live in denial and believe that he was the Messiah of their understanding!
His followers thought he was going to not only triumphantly enter the Holy City, but that he would call down God’s power and unite and army and take back this most holy city from the Romans and re-establish the nation of Israel! 
Instead Jesus was whipped, beaten, mocked, and publicly humiliated and put to death on a Cross the ultimate embarrassing way to die.  Even Peter on seeing the empty tomb, left the shaking his head in disbelief!  Jesus disappointed his followers almost to the point of despair.  This is not how it is supposed to end, they kept saying to themselves.  Why….  I don’t know about you, but I have found myself saying those exact words a number of times in my life.  Why…this is not how it is supposed to end!
The Romans were disappointed because this dynamic itinerant preacher with a rather large following of people, put up no fight whatsoever.  There were no big battles that were won.  There was no looting, ransacking or any other thing like that.  He was such a disappointment that they made his whipping, beating, and crowing with thorns into a public spectacle.  He and his followers were a great disappointment to the Roman leaders.
In fact one could pretty much say this thing that we celebrate tonight….was a great disappointment to almost everyone. 
We celebrate the empty tomb today as if it is a great symbol of freedom, yet I would dare to say that Jesus followers saw it as a great disappointing mystery.
So how do we get from disappointing mystery to the joy of Easter and the Resurrection….
I believe there is one key….that key is acceptance.
You see until we accept the fact that Jesus was a disappointment we can not admit that the early church’s understanding and our modern understandings of the Messiah were and are flawed. 
I can hear it now….OMG a Bishop said the Church is flawed?  Yep!  I did and it is!  If we accept that fact, then we can stop putting leadership on pedestals and start walking with one another in true servant leadership.
Until we accept the fact that we are Spiritual Beings having a Human Experience, then we will forever be a disappointment to ourselves because perfection is not a part of the human equation.
Until we accept the fact that we will never know or understand the fundamental mystery of this Divine entity we call God, and that we probably understand less than one pixel of a 72” digital tv, then we will forever be fighting with each other over who is right and who is wrong.
Until we accept the fact that we do not have all the answers to life’s questions and those that we think we do have are probably flawed, then we will always be excluding people from access to their basic rights, food, freedom and faith.
And so my friends, I want to say welcome, to the celebration of the biggest disappointment known.  And welcome to the hardest thing anyone of us can ever do…practicing acceptance, acceptance of the fact that we really know only a speck of this amazing, wonderful and mysterious thing we call God!