Turnagain United Methodist Church

“RED EGGS”

June 25, 2006

© Rev. James A. Campbell D.Min., All rights reserved.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust.

This morning I add yet another drama to the current interest these days in the life of Mary Magdalene and her relation to Jesus.

In the Orthodox Tradition Mary Magdalene was of high social rank that warranted a meeting with the Roman emperor Caesar Antipas. She sought a meeting to complain about Pontius Pilate’s treatment of Jesus and to share the story of Jesus Resurrection.

To illustrate what resurrection was, she lifted an egg from the table to discuss new life. Caesar responded he would believe that resurrection took place when that egg in her hand turned red

and so…..

This traditional story and its truth are simple and direct.   Yet for me to appreciate the egg, I can not stand back and settle for the obvious. I feel the need to engage the egg.  To take it on.  To wrestle with it until I find a way for it to speak to the depths of life. I cannot settle for the pretty egg on the pedestal.  I have to come to terms with it

                                                              And what it means for my life.   As I thought about the egg I became disappointed in God.  I was disappointed that God  would answer Caesar’s challenge on Caesars terms.

Caesar says in the story….”until I see a red egg.”

And God responds: “You want a red egg!!! okay, you get red egg. Bingo!!!! There’s your red egg.

Who always got his way,

Who even thinks he is a God….   gets his way even with God.

Why could not the moment have been on God’s terms?

        Why could it not have been a GOLD Faberge egg?

 Or why couldn’t the egg suddenly turn into a mirror and what Caesar saw was himself for what he was?  Ahh… now THAT would have been a God moment.

There… take that Caesar….

               now what are you going to do with it?                             

Look at the egg and see yourself.

No…….Caesar got what Caesar wanted.

Yes….and what does he do with it?

After the red egg, Caesar starts feeding Christians to the lions, throwing them to the gladiators.

Some impact.

Come on God! Exercise…..” ecology of revelation.”  Revelation, BIG GOD DRAMATIC MOMENTS……are rare.  God’s signature moments across creation for all to see are precious and rare.  There aren’t that many dramatic red egg moments…….

      Why waste them on Caesar?              

And then on Caesar’s terms.

Render unto Caesar what is Caesars ,  and render unto God what is God’s

 And let God not waste all this rendering

But give the red eggs of resurrection to those who would appreciate them, build on them.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust. Have you ever been disappointed with God’s blessings….

disappointed in what seems to be a waste of blessing?

Thirty two years ago my best friend Norm Scheider was dying of kidney failure. Late in life he went to seminary,  a person with deep discernment,  humanity, rich humor and spiritual depth.  Not even a year out of his graduation Norm is fighting for his life.  These were the very early years of organ transplants and when he received a kidney transplant they put him in intensive care in the same room with the man who received the other kidney. Everything was going wonderfully for the other man. The family was so elated with the wonder, so quietly excited 

          Ahh….. the miracles, the red eggs of science!!!!!!

A miracle given as they wanted and imagined.  They had a red egg . God responding on their terms of what they prayed for.  But things were not going well for Norm.  Almost immediately they could see it was not working…..  but, lo and behold….. a second kidney was suddenly  made available.  Norm went back into surgery and almost died from an over dose of anesthesia. Shortly after he came to,  it was evident the second kidney was not going to take either. They finally removed him from the presence of the other families celebration of their red egg.     

Even as those who love Norm so much could not help but think and whisper…..

“Why could it not have been Norm in the other bed?”  Of course that is selfish and irrational, 

        But ……..

“Come on God, I’m sure the other man is a fine human being,  but so is Norm  and he could have taken the witness of new life and turned his resurrection, his red egg  into a wonderful proclamation of the gospel. No, instead, Norm went back to dialysis and things went from bad to worse. Sometimes people would say to Norm, “this isn’t fair.”  and Norm responded “ It’s not a matter of being fair, being one with God is a privilege,  but it doesn’t necessarily mean receiving privileges.”  Red Eggs are not given on demand.

Well….except Caesar….Yea…way to go God.

Oh that gets to me. Ecology God…ecology of resurrection.  So profound was the depth of Norm Scheider that later in his long hospital ordeal, one of the staff came in after work - a doctor came in to talk with Norm of that doctors own spiritual hungers. That, just doesn’t happen.  Thirty years later I still find myself now and then saying,  “This moment of ministry is for you Norm.”  Thirty years later,   I still remember the two men lying in intensive care.

One singing praise be to God for Red Eggs…. 

               The other, my friend, continued to suffer unto death.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust.

And so I am driving through
Iowa, one stop after another.Somewhere on the map in mid afternoon, I am listening to “Fresh Air” on National Public Radio.  Terry Gross is interviewing Reynolds Price… distinguished professor of Literature at
Duke
University. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.  A Rhodes Scholar intellectual who writes a book for his God Child concerning matters of faith.  In the book he writes of a moment in the midst of a serious, nearly always fatal, cancer on the spine.  Price says he has a vision of being healed.  He sits up in bed and says he watches as Christ blesses his back,  forgiving his sins….  And Reynolds Price says “ yea…… welllll….what about the cancer?”  “That too” came the response.  This is after all,  National Public Radio and Terry Gross  goes after him about having visions in illness,  surely these are drug reactions, psychological reactions to trauma and death,  rational explanations for explainable delusions.  “Yea,” says Price. “I know. I know.  I know where you are coming from.  No, this happened to me.”   He is he says, a most unlikely person to have this happen.  “Hear me…. I am not a saint,  I am not puritanical,  I do not go to church.  I don’t explain it…but it happened.”

Then he jokes about it. Trust me, I am not a spiritual candidate for what happened.  But the vision happened.  The healing happened,  and beyond all odds I am still around.  So, Reynolds Price, unlikely,  irreverent,  as he is spiritual in his own way,  received the red egg as God goes public on National Public Radio.

That’s when it comes to me.

The issue is not only that rain falls on the just and the unjust, it is a matter WHO is waiting for the rain and how they tend the garden. The issue is not that the egg turned red, but whether we are willing to stay with it, whatever the egg, even a rotten egg...  stay with it until the egg hatches.

In the end, it isn’t the wonder of the color of the egg we get when we demand it, but the life we find in what ever egg comes our way  in a willingness to endure until Easter hatches into a new day, a new spirit, even a new us.

As we watch Jesus rise once more from a tomb… that is us.

The question in the end is not whether we get the miracle we request but whether we are open to being all that life can be with the miracles we receive.    What difference does it make if we demand a red egg and get it  ……but don’t know what to do with it?

What difference we do make when we yearn for a red egg and get egg in the face,

but by God’s grace  laugh, then gather the egg scramble it and serve it with toast.

Caesar would never have understood that, but then, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.