All Saints Lutheran Church

Pastor Raita Neely

Easter 2003, April 20, 2003

Mark 16:1-8

"They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."  How can we possibly shout "Alleluia, Christ is risen!"  when our gospel reading ends with no risen Jesus and silent, fearful women?  Like Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" it leaves the last note hanging expectantly in the air.  Mark's Gospel is like an unfinished symphony.  At first it seems that all Jesus' efforts have been for nothing: for the people are still afraid, even after hearing the marvelous good news of the resurrection.  Could it be that the writer of Mark wants us to trust God's promises made throughout Mark's gospel, and look around in our lives and in our world and there seek and see the risen Jesus active and alive, even today? Does what you celebrate today in some way depend on each of you?   And what do you celebrate today?  Did you come here today to do homage to a good and honorable man, maybe even a prophet,  who died over 2000 years ago?  Or are you someone who even though you can't explain the mystery of it, came once again to marvel at God's power to change lives through the living, acting Christ, whom you call Savior and Lord?

Maybe it is in going out and becoming a part of the story, in sharing our faith stories and the stories of others we have known and still others we have heard about who discovered Christ among them, that we come to recognize that Christ is with us, forgiving, healing, loving, inviting all into community with him.  This morning I would like to share such a story with you.

Our story takes place more than a hundred years ago, in the year 1899.  Everyone had been talking about the turn of the century.  More than anything, people in Tinyville , Mississippi thought God was going to do something new and exciting in the next century.  No one had a reason why, I guess they just thought God had a thing for round numbers or something.

A few started it all by asserting  that Christ would return to earth in the twentieth century, and soon everyone in town was talking about it and believing that Christ's return was imminent.  In a small town, there is lots of talk, and usually it's small talk, but this was such wonderful news that everyone got excited and everyone commented on Christ packing his heavenly bags and arriving back on earth.  There was lots of speculation about the divine visitation. When?  Where?  How would Christ return?

Now there was one man in town-Mr. Romano- who didn't believe Christ was going to return in the twentieth century, which was no great surprise to the people because everyone knew Mr. Romano didn't believe in Christ.  He didn't believe in God either.  If Mr. Romano hadn't lived in Tinyville, few would have known the meaning of the words atheist and cynic.  No one could say if Mr. Romano was a cynic because he didn't believe in God, or if he was an atheist because he was so cynical.

Anyway, both children and adults held Mr. Romano in low esteem.  Every so often, someone would mention him at church and say that everyone should pray for his sinful, soon to be lost soul.  But no one spoke well of him in or out of church. Well, that's not completely true.  There was one thing about Mr. Romano that everyone admired.  He was a photographer.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, Mr. Romano's photos were worth a million words set to music.  So the town tolerated his cynicism and his atheism, just so there'd be someone around to take pictures of weddings, newborn babies, and community events.  Otherwise, no one socialized with him.  They rarely even talked to him.

But when everybody started agreeing that Jesus was on his way back, Mr. Romano started pushing his way into conversations all over the place.  He mocked the town for its religious fervor:  "You think Christ is going to return?  That's the silliest thing I've ever heard.  How can you think someone's coming back when he never came in the first time.  Just look around you and around the world, does this look like some place that God has redeemed?  I'll believe Christ is coming back when I see it with my own eyes."

But the people of Tinyville were so convinced that Christ was coming back that the main question became when would Christ return to Tinyville.  So they decided that they needed to find a way to attract Christ to Tinyville.  The local newspaper ran a contest where everyone could submit ideas for attracting Jesus to their town.  Some suggested  that the whole town should participate in doing something very biblical like wiping sheep's blood on their door posts, but it was quickly pointed out that that ritual would make Jesus pass over the town. Someone suggested they change the name of the town to New Jerusalem, but others thought that would be a bit presumptuous.
The idea that won was that the whole town should come together to put a new stained glass window in Resurrection Methodist Church 's sanctuary-not just any stained glass window, but the brightest, most colorful, most spectacular stained-glass window ever seen.  And it must be something different, appropriate to the new century in which Christ would change everything.  So the window itself should somehow be able to change.

They brought in an artist all the way from California to design the window.  And this is what he came up with:  He designed a square window with square panels that moved along grooves, you know, like those children's puzzles where you move the squares around with your thumbs to get all the scrambled numbers in order. The only problem with using that kind of puzzle as a model for a window is that there always has to be a blank space in which to slide a window pane.  It was no problem to put a clear glass window behind the entire stained glass puzzle to keep the cold air from blowing in, but it just wouldn't look right with a blank square in the middle of all that stained glass.  But the artist found a way to use that empty space to his artistic advantage.

When the window was finished, it was a small town with nondescript buildings and houses and an immense  Jesus.  Jesus was glorious-  tall, slender, handsome, standing erect with his feet positioned as if he were walking.   Deep golden brown hair and piercing blue eyes.  His clothes the whitest white you have ever seen and his halo so yellow it looked like God had just polished it with a cloud.  When the sun came through that window, you almost couldn't look at Jesus without squinting for he was so bright and glorious.

The window was made of fifteen sliding panes plus that one extra space, so that it was four panes high and four panes wide.  It was designed to be set in one of two positions.  In the first position, Jesus was standing on the left side of the window walking away from the town.  The small town was to the right, behind Jesus, with the empty pane being in the upper right-hand corner.  On the stained-glass panes just below the empty space was the picture of a pole that ran up to the empty space.  Painted on the clear glass up in the corner was a road sign with the town name on it: Jerusalem .  So, you see, in this position, the window portrayed Jesus having just been raised from the dead in all his glory, departing from Jerusalem so that he could meet his disciples back in Galilee.

In the second position, Jesus was over on the right, the town on the left.  This way  it looked like Jesus was approaching the town.  And this time the empty space  was in the upper left-hand corner, and the sign on this road sign read Tinyville.  In this position the window showed the glorified Jesus returning to Tinyville.

The local newspaper wanted some pictures for its front page, so the editor tried to hire Mr. Romano.  But he just laughed and said he would do it for free. There was just one requirement.  He must be left alone to do his work.

So one Friday morning, when the light was at it very best, the church council of Resurrection Church shut him up in the sanctuary to do his work. But they stayed right outside the door the whole time.  It was about six hours before Mr. Romano finally opened the doors and headed out.  The council members were full of questions, "Did you get a good shot?  Was the light OK?  What took you so long?" But Mr. Romano didn't answer any questions.  He walked straight out of the church, muttering to himself, "He really is God's Son.  He really is."

The council were all amazed.  Finally someone spoke up, "We did it!  We presented Christ's resurrection and return with such power that even unabelievers will see God's light!"

Everyone was anxious to see how the stained-glass window looked through the camera's eye.  So when the photographs arrived in the mail at the newspaper office, the editor invited the council to his house to be there when he opened the envelope and saw them for the first time.

But what a shock they got.  Not a single photo showed the window as it was supposed to be.  Mr. Romano had taken pictures of the window when the panes were all out of order, when Christ was scrambled and the town was in pieces.  Jesus and the town were all mixed together.  In each photograph, the empty space was in a different place.   And the photographs weren't even in focus, the stained glass was all blurry. 

They spread the photos on a table, and one of them had just finished saying, "Not a good one in the bunch!"  when the editor's young son and some of his friends came running through the room.  They stopped to look at the photos, and one little boy said, "These are great pictures!"

The adults protested.  "Those are the worst pictures we've ever seen.  Jesus is all messed up, and everything is all out of focus."

"They're not out of  focus," the little boy replied.  And he pointed to the photograph he was holding.  The council leaned in to look at the photograph more closely, and sure enough, part of it was in focus.  Through the empty pane, at a distance, in clear focus, you could see Bart.  Bart always sat on the corner of Main and Oak begging for change.  He was the only man in Tinyville

who was blind. The members of the council started rechecking all the photos and, sure enough, in

every one of them the focus was on what could be seen at a distance through the empty pane, beyond the scrambled Jesus and broken-apart town.  What the photograph revealed depended on where the empty space was.  In one you could see the three shanties set up behind the general store.  In another you could see the dirty children coming out of the machine factory at the end of their long workday.  In the third one you could see two policemen arresting someone.  In a different photo you could see a small wooden house that needed paint and roofing work done on it.  In front of the house was a notice of an upcoming foreclosure auction.  Another photo through the empty pane showed a mother with four children standing at a graveside with a priest.  In the last picture, the empty pane revealed a burned cross standing beside a tree that had a noose hanging from a limb.

After that, everyone quit talking about the return of Jesus.  And every Sunday, the Church Council scrambled the window into a different position.  The children didn't really understand what had happened, so they asked why didn't anyone worry about Jesus coming back anymore.  And the adults were wise enough to say, "Because he's been here all along.  We just didn't recognize him."  Amen.