Five Hundred Snow Geese land on a pond in Butte, Montana. The snow geese are just typical snow geese on their southern migration in late fall. But the pond isn’t just any pond. This pond is a super fund site, a highly acidic toxic pond, filled with heavy metals from a copper mine. This pond is threatening the town’s water supply. If the pond ever spills its banks or soaks too far into the soil, it will poison the aquifer.

The towns folk try to scare the snow geese away, but the geese are too tired and the pond is rather large. The snow geese, head out into the middle and drink and bathe in the water. Then the painful deaths start occurring. The honking was deafening. The water ate through the throats of the geese and they all died after a few hours. Now the towns people had to clean up 500 snow geese in a toxic pond.

I think this is a metaphor for Holy Week. Jesus, an innocent man, is sent by God on a mission. In the beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, states the first Chapter of the Good News according to John. He preaches about the kingdom of God, the beloved community that the Jewish people have been waiting for. Yet he doesn’t preach to just Jewish people, he preaches to Jew and Gentile, men and women, slave and free, even tax collectors and Samaritan women! He says crazy things like blessed are the poor, the meek, those who are in grief. When asked about what the beloved community of God is like, he tells nutty parables where the first are last and the last are first. Where the hungry are fed, the poor given a good word, the naked clothed. He says that the law can be summed up in two commands, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself. And who is your neighbor? Funny you should ask. A man is beaten and left for dead by robbers along a road. A minister and a police officer both walk by and don’t help the man. Yet a Muslim Refugee stops and brings the man to the hospital and pays for his healthcare.

For saying these things, Jesus is killed. He’s not killed for blasphemy, the religious punishment for that would be to be stoned to death. That’s having rocks thrown at you until you die. Instead, he is tried as an enemy of the state and dies the political death of being crucified. The Roman Governor Pontius Pilate is amazed at Jesus, how he stays quite in front of his accusers and he washes his hands of the matter as he can find not fault in Jesus. Yet Jesus dies a humiliating and painful death. He is beaten and bloodied. And then hung on a cross for three hours and dies. The last words are “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”

Innocent Geese dead. An innocent man dead. Some would say it these innocents died because of our sin. We need copper, it’s in all our electronics and many of us have copper pipes for plumbing. That demand led to greed and that greed led to a poisonous pond that we can’t clean up. That endangers the entire town of Butte and if it gets into the aquafer, the entire town would become a ghost town and cause deaths and chronic diseases and other awfulness.

What killed Jesus was sin. Our sin. The sin of our tribalism. The sin of ranking people into categories. Here are people who are outside of God’s love: Murders, non-Christians, and people who make lists saying who is outside of God’s love. Christ came and people called him Messiah, lord and savior! One writer even stated, “In Christ there’s no male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave or free. We are one in Christ.”

We have this myth of redemptive violence. If you hit me, I hit you. You steal something from me, I steal something from you. You take my eye, I take yours. Yet Christ said, “You have heard it said ‘an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth’ but I say unto you do not resist. Someone strikes you on the cheek, turn and offer the other. If a solider requires you to carry their pack a mile, go another mile.” And he lived these teachings of radical peace out in his life. Through his unfair trial and execution, he says that he would rather die than return hate for hate. This inspired the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to say, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

You might have experienced this way of thinking in your family, friends or even in your work place. The myth of redemptive violence is everywhere. Take action movies. Bad guys do something to the good guy. The good guy does something bad back. Then the bad guys do something worse until the good guy lands the final blow and the bad guys are dead or in prison. Or how you’re not inviting that particular family member. Or why you don’t hang around that friend anymore after they insulted your outfit or criticized you. Or it’s why HR doesn’t like marketing in your job. Someone was slighted and a rivalry formed. We see this in our world when Christians damn everyone who’s not Christian to hell. Or how other Christians damn other Christians to hell because they aren’t Christian like they are. Jesus isn’t having any of that. He says, “I would rather die than keep this violence in circulation.” The first followers of this man Jesus thought that sounded like good news. A redeeming message. His teachings bring about the Beloved Community of God that was promised in the Hebrew scriptures. They called this man fully human, fully divine. Son of God. God incarnate.

The Montana winter became spring and then summer in Butte. Someone noticed that growing on the pond was this black scum. People were concerned because nothing grew in the pond. They took the scum to some local scientists. Now efforts have been made by the EPA to clean up the water, but at best they could clean about 20% of the heavy metals from the water. This black scum was cleaning somewhere between 85% to 95% of the heavy metals. This scum was cleaning up the poison! The scientists were intrigued. It was particular strain bacteria that was sponging up the heavy metals. They found that these bacteria can only be found in the gastrointestinal tract of snow geese.

The God we find in Jesus is a God that brings life out of death. When Jesus was resurrected, this is God saying that nothing can separate us from God’s love, not life nor death, not powers nor principalities, nor height nor depth nor anything else in all of creation can separate us from the love of God. The cross exposes the myth of redemptive violence and the resurrection of Jesus is the bacteria that is cleaning us up. Christians are the body of Christ. The church is the cleaning agent for the world: feeding the hungry, meeting violence with peace, turning the other cheek, finding common ground between enemies, taking violence out of circulation. Stating that were there is death, God will bring life. The tomb is empty!

Before the cross, Jesus was saying “Love God, love your neighbor.” We killed him and he comes back three days later and says, “As I was saying, love God and your neighbor.” And finally, his disciples get it and they start running around saying “Love God and your neighbor!” Peter, who has been less than eloquent all throughout the Gospels, is the first to give a sermon! Peter who doubted Mary. The line “Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.” What did they believe? That Jesus’ body was stolen. Yet Christ shows up to Mary who doesn’t recognize him. Everyone is welcome in this community and nothing can separate you from the love of God. Not who you are, where you’ve been, who your parents were, what you’ve done: the love of God covers all that. Now turn your life and thinking around to this way of life and tell others! This is the salvation of the world here!

The murky, acidic pond can be clean again! God is turning us around! The church is the bacteria of God. Out of death, new life is coming! He is risen! He is risen indeed! A new life is available to us all! Christ is as near as your next breath. Christ is among us when two or three are gathered. God is still speaking in our world and is not through with us yet! This sounds like Good News to me.

This is my first sermon as your senior pastor. I couldn’t pass up the metaphor of our new life together than starting on this day, this holiest of days. I hope to see you all again next Sunday, and the next and the next as we share our stories, seek Christ in our midst, and become Christ to one another and Medina and the world. Yet it’s hard and we’ll need a lot of training for this way of life. I hope you’ll join us as we train one another up in how to be Christ to the world, how to turn the other cheek and bring good news and healing to a hurting world. Amen.

Bibliography

Dobb, Edwin. “New Life in a Death Trap.” Discover Magazine. December 1, 2000. Accessed April 01, 2017. http://discovermagazine.com/2000/dec/featnewlife.

“Even the Worst Laid Plans?” Radiolab. Accessed April 01, 2017. http://www.radiolab.org/story/91724-even-the-worst-laid-plans/. Special thanks to the Rev. Quinn Caldwell who turned me onto this story and podcast from his Chidester Lecture in January 2017.