“Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, I hear the word of the Lord…. Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun’, dem bones gonna walk aroun’, dem bones gonna walk aroun’, I hear the word of the Lord!” [sung by the Delta Rhythm Boys and played on Ipod deck.] It’s a great song, a great spiritual, isn’t it? But, do you believe it? Are dem bones really gonna walk aroun’?
Did the exiled Israelites who heard Ezekiel’s prophecy believe it? It was the sixth century BC. Ezekiel, a prominent priest and prophet, was in exile in Babylon, along with the king and the elite of his people. Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Along with his people, Ezekiel was in deep mourning. Episcopalians don’t hear much from the prophecy of Ezekiel. In our three-year lectionary this passage occurs in Lent in Year A, and here as an alternative on Pentecost. Another closely related passage from Ezekiel can be heard at the Easter Vigil. That’s it. But Ezekiel is an unusual, even exciting book. Traditionally one had to be a seasoned scholar to be allowed to read it. Why? Because the book – and I commend it to you for your own reading – is filled with arresting images that turn up again and again in later visionary writing. Blown about and lifted up by the Spirit, Ezekiel begins the book with stunning visions of angels, of wheels within wheels, and of God’s glory. He then goes on to catalogue the many ways in which the Israelites have broken their covenant with God. Finally, in the last third of the book, Ezekiel offers a stunning vision of the renewal and restoration of Israel, and of a return from Babylon that would be nothing short of a second Exodus.
Perhaps drawing on the vision of a bone-littered battlefield, Ezekiel suggests for the first time ever in history that resurrection might be possible. Is Ezekiel talking about physical, bodily resurrection? Probably not. Rather, it is the renewal and restoration of the people of Israel that Ezekiel is describing here. As captives of the Babylonians, deprived of the sacred temple, the people who heard this prophecy had every right to say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” When God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel surely thinks, “No way.” But face to face with God, he gives the only – and the truest – answer he can give, “O Lord God, you know.” Only God can make or create new life, so God takes the initiative and orders Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones. God tells Ezekiel to call the bones back to life and assure them that bone would join with bone (“Your toe bone connected to your foot bone, your foot bone connected to your ankle bone….”), and that muscles and skin would grow on them.
The Hebrew word ruach means breath, spirit, and wind, all three. So, we have here a wonderful play on words that calls to mind the creation stories of Genesis (“a wind from God swept over the waters” and “then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”). Using this play on words, God further commands Ezekiel to bring the breath from the four winds and “breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” And the newly restored house of Israel clatters to its feet and stands there, “a great multitude,” eager to hear the promises that God offers to the people, to bring them back to the land of Israel, to their own soil, forgiven, restored, and renewed.
Though the prophet uttered the commands, the miracle, of course, was all God’s doing. The agent of the miracle was God’s Spirit. It was a new outpouring of this same spirit that Jesus promised to his disciples on the night before he died. It was a new outpouring of this same spirit, complete with what felt to them like a “rushing wind,” that the gathered disciples experienced on Pentecost. It was the same spirit that equipped them for mission and blew them out into the squares and synagogues of Jerusalem to proclaim new life in Jesus’ name. It was the same spirit that led to the gathering together of the writings we call the New Testament and that has continued to inspire, renew, and empower the community created through the spirit.
Can these bones live? As we look around at the church today, our answer might be the same as that of Ezekiel. We too might want to say, “No way.” However, if God is doing the asking, we just might have the humility to say, “O Lord, you know.” There is no question that we have reason for despair. Although we have tended to see the swelling of church membership in the post-World War II period as the norm, it is more likely that that influx of members was a blip in the long history of the church. Now it is clear that church membership is declining again in North America and Europe. There are fewer and fewer full-time clergy, clergy sexual abuse in parishes and religious orders is coming to light, every level of the church is struggling to make ends meet, parishes are closing, and most members of the current younger generation couldn’t care less about organized religion. They claim to be “spiritual but not religious,” and the vast majority of them claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. Doesn’t Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones describe us too? Where is God’s miraculous life-giving spirit?
Perhaps we need to take the long view. Church historians, most recently Phyllis Tickle and Diana Butler Bass, tell us that the church seems to have experienced a major shift about every 500 years. The fifth century saw the beginning of several centuries of a stagnating church, as the Roman Empire declined, classical learning diminished, the eastern and western churches drew apart, and the torch of learning burned feebly in Europe, mostly in monasteries and convents. At the turn of the first millennium the church experienced a renewal of scholarship, mysticism, and devotion. The great cathedrals were built, and many historic religious orders were founded. Five hundred years later the Reformation fractured the western church yet again. But it also engendered a great upsurge in learning, translations of the Bible, and liturgies in the common languages. Ordinary people were able to have more direct and deeper direct access to God. Following the Reformation, in much of Europe, and even in North America until the American Revolution, church and state were tightly intertwined, and religious diversity was rare. Even with the rise of science, secular culture largely supported church membership. Now it is clear that we are entering a new phase of church life and identity. God is doing a new thing, and we are struggling to find new ways of being church. New spiritual groups are arising: intentional communities, storefront churches, street church for the homeless, groups gathering for worship at times other than Sunday morning. We may not know what’s coming next, but we continue to trust God to breathe life into “these slain,” to restore and renew the church that the Spirit birthed on Pentecost.
Can these bones live here at St. Peter’s? Don’t we have some of the same reasons to ask that question about our parish as we do for the wider church? Our congregation is smaller than it was a generation ago, our budget perhaps half of what it was, your priest is half-time, and there isn’t a single twenty-something whom we can say belongs to this church community. Are the bones of this limb of the Body of Christ dried up? Have we lost hope? God willing, the answer to both those questions, is at least, “O Lord, you know.” Hear again God’s promise: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live … then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” Hear again Jesus’ promise to his friends: “When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth,… he will declare to you the things that are to come.” As surely as God is doing a new thing in the wider church, I believe that God is doing a new thing at St. Peter’s.
Are we open to what God might be doing here? Ezekiel’s vision reminds us that God alone restores life. Our psalm reminds us that God creates and renews all. Can we give up our preoccupation with the church as it was, and begin to consider the church as it might be? Can we begin to see with God’s eyes and seek out those new paths to which God might be calling us, both in the wider church, and at the parish level? Can we pray that, just like the prophet Ezekiel, we too can be instruments of God’s life-giving power, and we too can say to those who are dispirited and who have lost hope, “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live?” And finally, can we answer with the Psalmist, “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being?”
Sing one more time with me: “Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me, Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me; melt me, mold me, fill me, use me; Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me.” [Sung by congregation.] Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Sunday, May 20, 2012
They Prayed
Jesus was gone! The forty days since the disciples had realized that he was alive again, after his crucifixion, had gone by so fast. Luke tells us that Jesus had spent most of those forty days preparing the disciples to carry on his mission. Jesus reminded them that he couldn’t stay with them forever, and that he would empower them for mission by sending them the Holy Spirit. Even so, the disciples weren’t prepared for what happened in Bethany that day: Jesus just disappeared from sight. Even though two angels told them Jesus had at last returned to heaven, and that he would eventually come back, they were still confused. Jesus was gone! What would happen next?
We recognize the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry and his return to heaven on Ascension Day, always forty days after Easter, and therefore always on a Thursday. Ascension Day was, and really still is, a major feast in the church. In some parishes, it’s still a day for a festal Eucharist and, often, a potluck feast. Now, though, Ascension Day is usually passed over or commemorated on the following Sunday.
Certainly it’s important to remember Ascension Day. Even though the whole idea of Jesus’ ascension into heaven is hard to grasp, the Ascension is a core part of our faith. Indeed, we continue to affirm its importance every time we repeat the Nicene or Apostles’ Creed. Even so, there’s also a good reason to keep this Sunday as the Seventh Sunday of Easter, as the middle of a special time between Ascension Day and Pentecost. We need to pay attention to where Jesus’ disciples were – and we are – in this in-between time. For this was a time of uncertainty for Jesus’ first followers. They had absorbed his teaching, and they had experienced his departure. Now they were back in Jerusalem, waiting for the fulfillment of his promise, the coming of the Holy Spirit. There were actually quite a few of them. The verses preceding the ones we’ve heard this morning remind us that the remaining eleven of the original twelve, minus Judas, several women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, Jesus’ brothers, and many other disciples had come together in Jerusalem. Indeed, as we heard, there were altogether “120 believers” waiting for the beginning of the next act, waiting to be empowered by the Holy Spirit and sent out to carry on Jesus’ mission. We might wonder where indeed they actually were. Do you remember the Adam Hamilton DVD? Perhaps they were all gathered in that huge upper room. They knew they were in a time of transition, and so they patiently waited – together.
Aren’t we at St. Peter’s in a similar time of uncertainty and waiting, a similar time of transition? In some ways, the church is always in a time of transition, as we live in that “middle time” between Jesus’ resurrection and his return, and as the secular culture continues to change around us. And, of course, liturgically we are in a transition time. During this Easter tide we too have again been instructed as to the meaning of resurrection, and we too look forward to being infused anew with the gifts of the Spirit. However, I think that we are in a time of transition as a parish too. This parish has seen much change in the last two decades, even in the last few years. Clergy leadership has changed several times, many key lay leaders are gone, some to death, some to relocation, much of the next generation is gone too, and even with part-time clergy leadership, the budget is not balanced. And yet, aren’t there also signs of new life among us? For one thing, we’re still here! Plus, in the past year, we’ve been blessed with two new families. Even so, we too might be wondering: what’s next?
Perhaps there are some clues in that upper room. Let’s go back upstairs and take a closer look at what happened there. The first thing we notice is that, as the disciples were waiting, they came together. Although they had scattered when Jesus was arrested and executed, in this time of uncertainty, they supported and took care of each other. They devoted themselves to in-reach, staying together, studying Scripture, and teaching each other. More important, they prayed. We learn from the verse before the beginning of our lection, that “they were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” Then, the disciples took stock of themselves. They looked at who they were, and what gifts and skills they had. They discerned who was missing, and they understood that it was important to replace Judas among the inner core of apostles. Then they prayed some more, they “cast lots,” perhaps they threw dice or flipped a coin, and they asked God to show them what God’s will was for them. We may raise our eyebrows at the “casting of lots” part, but, rest assured, that was a common practice in the ancient world for discerning God’s will. Finally, having done their best, the disciples accepted the outcome of their process and appointed Matthias as Judas’s replacement. Did the other man, Joseph Barsabbas harbor any resentment at not being chosen? The account in Acts doesn’t record any. Indeed, the New Testament says nothing more about the lives of either man.
If we come back down from the upper room and look at ourselves, are we still grieving the loss of old friends and old ways of being church? Are we wondering whether there are ministries “out there,” we need to look at? Are there ways to strengthen our internal life that we need to pursue? Those of us engaged in the Common Ministry process see it as a way of renewal for St. Peter’s. However, as we work at that process, learn new tools, and set out on the new paths to which Jesus might be leading us, we still might take a page out of the earliest disciples’ playbook. Like them, we can support and care for each other. We can gather together and pray for ourselves, for each other, and for this parish. We can discover how to listen more attentively to God. Some of us are celebrating the Eucharist and learning more about prayer on Wednesday evenings. Come and be part of the gathered ones. Secondly, we can take stock of who we are. At the Common Ministry meeting in March, the team made a preliminary scan of the talents and skills in this parish. We are an immensely talented group! I invite you to join the process on June 3rd, when we will take a closer look at all our many spiritual gifts. You don’t think you have any spiritual gifts? Believe me, we all do. We simply need to discern what they are, and where we can exercise them. We can discern too who is missing from our parish. We began to consider that question last week, and we can continue discerning who else should be in our midst.
Like the disciples we can then offer our needs up to God in prayer. All of our work as a parish is grounded in prayer. We remind ourselves of the need for prayer when we open our Vestry meetings or other important gatherings with prayer. We can also pray for specific aspects of our parish life. We can pray for our ministries. I invite you to support and pray for our young people, our worship life, our diaper ministry, and Loaves and Fishes. I invite you to pray for those who are here. A couple of weeks ago, I asked you to look around, choose a person here, and pray for that person during the week. I invite you to do that again this week. And we can pray for those who are not here. Can you pray for and then invite here those who are missing? And here’s something else you can do. Last summer, we were blessed to welcome two new families into our parish. I am now praying that two more new families will join us this year. Will you join me in that prayer?
There’s an old hymn that some of you may know, “Are ye able?” The fourth verse and refrain of it go like this:
Are ye able? Still the Master
whispers down eternity,
and heroic spirits answer,
now as then in Galilee.
Lord, we are able. Our spirits are thine.
Remold them, make us, like thee, divine.
Thy guiding radiance above us shall be
a beacon to God, to love, and loyalty.
We are able. We are able, because we know that Jesus has been praying for his followers since the night before he died for them, and is praying for us still. We are able, because we know that, just as he promised to his first friends, he still promises to us, that he will empower us with the Holy Spirit, and that he will strengthen us a community able and willing to reach out to others. As we look towards Pentecost, we join our prayers with his. Come, Holy Spirit, come to us in this time and place. Come to us when we sit in silence and when we are moving too fast. Surprise us, revive us, and shape us into the Body of Christ. Amen.
We recognize the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry and his return to heaven on Ascension Day, always forty days after Easter, and therefore always on a Thursday. Ascension Day was, and really still is, a major feast in the church. In some parishes, it’s still a day for a festal Eucharist and, often, a potluck feast. Now, though, Ascension Day is usually passed over or commemorated on the following Sunday.
Certainly it’s important to remember Ascension Day. Even though the whole idea of Jesus’ ascension into heaven is hard to grasp, the Ascension is a core part of our faith. Indeed, we continue to affirm its importance every time we repeat the Nicene or Apostles’ Creed. Even so, there’s also a good reason to keep this Sunday as the Seventh Sunday of Easter, as the middle of a special time between Ascension Day and Pentecost. We need to pay attention to where Jesus’ disciples were – and we are – in this in-between time. For this was a time of uncertainty for Jesus’ first followers. They had absorbed his teaching, and they had experienced his departure. Now they were back in Jerusalem, waiting for the fulfillment of his promise, the coming of the Holy Spirit. There were actually quite a few of them. The verses preceding the ones we’ve heard this morning remind us that the remaining eleven of the original twelve, minus Judas, several women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, Jesus’ brothers, and many other disciples had come together in Jerusalem. Indeed, as we heard, there were altogether “120 believers” waiting for the beginning of the next act, waiting to be empowered by the Holy Spirit and sent out to carry on Jesus’ mission. We might wonder where indeed they actually were. Do you remember the Adam Hamilton DVD? Perhaps they were all gathered in that huge upper room. They knew they were in a time of transition, and so they patiently waited – together.
Aren’t we at St. Peter’s in a similar time of uncertainty and waiting, a similar time of transition? In some ways, the church is always in a time of transition, as we live in that “middle time” between Jesus’ resurrection and his return, and as the secular culture continues to change around us. And, of course, liturgically we are in a transition time. During this Easter tide we too have again been instructed as to the meaning of resurrection, and we too look forward to being infused anew with the gifts of the Spirit. However, I think that we are in a time of transition as a parish too. This parish has seen much change in the last two decades, even in the last few years. Clergy leadership has changed several times, many key lay leaders are gone, some to death, some to relocation, much of the next generation is gone too, and even with part-time clergy leadership, the budget is not balanced. And yet, aren’t there also signs of new life among us? For one thing, we’re still here! Plus, in the past year, we’ve been blessed with two new families. Even so, we too might be wondering: what’s next?
Perhaps there are some clues in that upper room. Let’s go back upstairs and take a closer look at what happened there. The first thing we notice is that, as the disciples were waiting, they came together. Although they had scattered when Jesus was arrested and executed, in this time of uncertainty, they supported and took care of each other. They devoted themselves to in-reach, staying together, studying Scripture, and teaching each other. More important, they prayed. We learn from the verse before the beginning of our lection, that “they were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” Then, the disciples took stock of themselves. They looked at who they were, and what gifts and skills they had. They discerned who was missing, and they understood that it was important to replace Judas among the inner core of apostles. Then they prayed some more, they “cast lots,” perhaps they threw dice or flipped a coin, and they asked God to show them what God’s will was for them. We may raise our eyebrows at the “casting of lots” part, but, rest assured, that was a common practice in the ancient world for discerning God’s will. Finally, having done their best, the disciples accepted the outcome of their process and appointed Matthias as Judas’s replacement. Did the other man, Joseph Barsabbas harbor any resentment at not being chosen? The account in Acts doesn’t record any. Indeed, the New Testament says nothing more about the lives of either man.
If we come back down from the upper room and look at ourselves, are we still grieving the loss of old friends and old ways of being church? Are we wondering whether there are ministries “out there,” we need to look at? Are there ways to strengthen our internal life that we need to pursue? Those of us engaged in the Common Ministry process see it as a way of renewal for St. Peter’s. However, as we work at that process, learn new tools, and set out on the new paths to which Jesus might be leading us, we still might take a page out of the earliest disciples’ playbook. Like them, we can support and care for each other. We can gather together and pray for ourselves, for each other, and for this parish. We can discover how to listen more attentively to God. Some of us are celebrating the Eucharist and learning more about prayer on Wednesday evenings. Come and be part of the gathered ones. Secondly, we can take stock of who we are. At the Common Ministry meeting in March, the team made a preliminary scan of the talents and skills in this parish. We are an immensely talented group! I invite you to join the process on June 3rd, when we will take a closer look at all our many spiritual gifts. You don’t think you have any spiritual gifts? Believe me, we all do. We simply need to discern what they are, and where we can exercise them. We can discern too who is missing from our parish. We began to consider that question last week, and we can continue discerning who else should be in our midst.
Like the disciples we can then offer our needs up to God in prayer. All of our work as a parish is grounded in prayer. We remind ourselves of the need for prayer when we open our Vestry meetings or other important gatherings with prayer. We can also pray for specific aspects of our parish life. We can pray for our ministries. I invite you to support and pray for our young people, our worship life, our diaper ministry, and Loaves and Fishes. I invite you to pray for those who are here. A couple of weeks ago, I asked you to look around, choose a person here, and pray for that person during the week. I invite you to do that again this week. And we can pray for those who are not here. Can you pray for and then invite here those who are missing? And here’s something else you can do. Last summer, we were blessed to welcome two new families into our parish. I am now praying that two more new families will join us this year. Will you join me in that prayer?
There’s an old hymn that some of you may know, “Are ye able?” The fourth verse and refrain of it go like this:
Are ye able? Still the Master
whispers down eternity,
and heroic spirits answer,
now as then in Galilee.
Lord, we are able. Our spirits are thine.
Remold them, make us, like thee, divine.
Thy guiding radiance above us shall be
a beacon to God, to love, and loyalty.
We are able. We are able, because we know that Jesus has been praying for his followers since the night before he died for them, and is praying for us still. We are able, because we know that, just as he promised to his first friends, he still promises to us, that he will empower us with the Holy Spirit, and that he will strengthen us a community able and willing to reach out to others. As we look towards Pentecost, we join our prayers with his. Come, Holy Spirit, come to us in this time and place. Come to us when we sit in silence and when we are moving too fast. Surprise us, revive us, and shape us into the Body of Christ. Amen.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Who's Missing?
“Oh my Lord,” said Peter, “it’s a second Pentecost! Didn’t God tell us through the prophet Joel, that God would ‘pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit,’ God said. And it happened to us Jews in Jerusalem, as we waited there, just as Jesus had told us to, before he left us for good. We were able to speak in the languages of the other Jews who were gathered there in Jerusalem – and they understood us! And now it’s happened again!” Peter and the rest of the Jewish disciples had indeed experienced in Jerusalem an unprecedented and astounding outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And then, just as the Spirit had driven Jesus out into the wilderness, the Spirit drove Peter and his friends out into the squares and synagogues of Jerusalem, and then, even further out, into the synagogues of other towns. At last they came to Joppa, on the coast, where Peter preached about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
A little ways up the coast, in Caesarea Maritima, a Roman city, the centurion Cornelius was praying. A “righteous gentile,” Cornelius had a vision of an angel, who told him to send for a Jewish fisherman turned preacher named Peter. Meanwhile, Peter was having a vision of his own. He saw a great sheet come down from heaven, filled with animals that Jews were forbidden to eat. “Take and eat,” a voice told him. “No, Lord,” swore Peter, “I have never eaten anything unclean.” To Peter’s astonishment, the voice replied, “Don’t call anything profane that God has made clean.” Three times this happened, and then the whole sheet was drawn back to heaven. Still meditating on this astonishing vision, Peter heard Cornelius’s servants knocking on the door. They asked him to come with them to Cornelius’s house. Now Jews and Gentiles were forbidden by Jewish law to associate with each other. By even accompanying the servants of a Roman officer, Peter was risking ritual defilement and exclusion from his community. Nevertheless, encouraged by the Holy Spirit, Peter set off for the Roman city. When Peter heard Cornelius’s story, he finally understood the vision that he had been given. He said, “At last I see that God shows no partiality – rather that anyone of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.” And he began to teach Cornelius and his household about the marvelous things that God had done in Christ.
Did Peter finish his sermon? No, as we discover in today’s reading, the last part of this wonderful story. The Holy Spirit had one more surprising trick up her sleeve. Before Peter could finish speaking, the Holy Spirit descended on all these Gentiles. It was astonishingly clear, even to these law-abiding Jewish disciples of Jesus, that the Spirit had come on the Gentiles as well. Out in the desert, the Ethiopian Eunuch, as we heard last week had asked Philip, “There’s water. Is there anything to keep me from being baptized?” In the same way, seeing the clear signs of the Holy Spirit among Cornelius and his family, Peter asked, “What can stop these people who have received the Holy Spirit, even as we have, from being baptized with water?” Not only were they baptized, but Peter and his friends actually stayed in the Gentile house forging bonds with these new believers.
It’s hard for us to appreciate what a frightening step baptizing and accepting these Gentiles as fellow followers of the Way was for Peter. The closest analogies we have in our own time perhaps are people who had the courage to leap over the rigid racial barriers of the pre-Civil Rights American South, the Hindu caste system, or South Africa under Apartheid. Inclusion of Gentiles in what was initially a Jewish movement was unprecedented in the ancient world. Unquestionably, the observant Jews among Jesus’ first followers were astounded that the Holy Spirit would command them to proclaim the good news to Gentiles. And we know from the rest of the Book of Acts that the earliest Christians continued to struggle with God’s command to include all ethnicities, genders, nationalities, and social classes in Jesus’ beloved community. Eventually, Paul, or perhaps one of his disciples, would write convincingly to the Christian community at Ephesus of the decision to reach out to Gentiles. “Christ is our peace,” he wrote, “who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of hostility that kept us apart. In his own flesh, Christ abolished the Law…. Christ came and ‘announced the Good News of peace to you who were far away, and to those who were near….’” (Eph.3:14,17). However, it was through Peter’s first tentative and reluctant encounter with Cornelius, through the driving force of the Holy Spirit, that God laid the foundation for what God is seeking to create through the church in every age: a community bound together through allegiance to Christ, in which all divisions are forever broken down.
As we look around at St. Peter’s, do we see such a community? In some respects, we are a diverse community. And yet, as I look around me, I wonder who is missing from our community. Who is unable to share their gifts with us? Are we, for example, able to accommodate someone in a wheelchair? We know that some of our people have difficulty hearing. What are we doing to include them in worship? Can we do more for those who have limited vision? Are we adequately serving families with infants? Are there Anglicans from other parts of the world who can teach us different ways of following Jesus? Might we do more for those who live next door or who meet downstairs? Whose gifts and contributions are we missing, and to whom might the Holy Spirit want to send us, if only we were paying attention?
Mark Pinsky tells the story of the residents of a group home for people with developmental disabilities in western Pennsylvania.1 In their first attempts to attend church, the residents had been asked not to return: they were too noisy, they were disruptive, and their physical or vocal limitations made members of the congregations they were visiting uncomfortable. Finally, Pastor Sue Montgomery of Nickleville Presbyterian Church agreed to work with the group home residents. Nickleville Presbyterian was a small congregation with a profound sense of hospitality and inclusion. Not only had the congregation supported a family that had not institutionalized a disabled child, they had learned how to minister to “all sorts and conditions” of people, to people with disabilities, to those who wrestled with questions of sexual identity, to those who had been in prison, and to those who struggled with addiction. Four people committed themselves to a ministry with the group home residents that the congregation called Training Towards Self Reliance.
Within two years the group home residents were active members of the congregation. They are now full participants in Sunday morning worship and members of the extended church family. They read the lections, play instruments or sing, assist with prayers, and receive offerings. Now the congregation is ministering to residents of other group homes, with on-site services and worship in church. Even staff members, who had never before attended church, have blossomed in their participation as they lead the group home residents in proper worship behavior. People with disabilities have even participated in raising funds for the town’s food pantry. Pastor Montgomery admits that including people with developmental disabilities into their parish life has not been easy. The congregation has had to make changes to accommodate the group home members. Regular members have had to overcome their fear, uncertainty and discomfort. They have had to learn tolerance, understanding, and acceptance. They have had to come to see the group home residents the way Jean Vanier came to see the residents of the L’Arche communities: as beloved children of God, who have their own gifts to give us, their own joys to teach us, and their own deep sense of God’s love to share with us.
“At last I see that God shows no partiality…. What can stop these people who have received the Holy Spirit, even as we have, from being baptized with water?” Who is missing at St. Peter’s? I invite you to take the slip of paper in your bulletin right now. There’s a pencil in every pew. I invite you right now to answer these questions: who is missing from St. Peter’s? Who would I like to invite here? Where would I be willing to go and help lead a worship service? Put your paper in the offering basin. Sign your name if you can. And give thanks to God, that God shows no partiality, that Christ has broken down the barriers that separate us, and that the Holy Spirit is with us still, sending us out to share the Good News with all our sisters and brothers.
1. “A Spirit of Hospitality,” Alban Weekly, April 23, 2012, accessed at http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=9913&utm_source=Alban+Weekly+2012+April+23+A+Spirit+of+Hospitality&utm_campaign=amazing+gifts+facebook&utm_medium=email on May 10, 2012. Adapted from Mark I. Pinsky, Amazing Gifts: Stories of Faith, Disability, and Inclusion (Alban Institute, 2012).
A little ways up the coast, in Caesarea Maritima, a Roman city, the centurion Cornelius was praying. A “righteous gentile,” Cornelius had a vision of an angel, who told him to send for a Jewish fisherman turned preacher named Peter. Meanwhile, Peter was having a vision of his own. He saw a great sheet come down from heaven, filled with animals that Jews were forbidden to eat. “Take and eat,” a voice told him. “No, Lord,” swore Peter, “I have never eaten anything unclean.” To Peter’s astonishment, the voice replied, “Don’t call anything profane that God has made clean.” Three times this happened, and then the whole sheet was drawn back to heaven. Still meditating on this astonishing vision, Peter heard Cornelius’s servants knocking on the door. They asked him to come with them to Cornelius’s house. Now Jews and Gentiles were forbidden by Jewish law to associate with each other. By even accompanying the servants of a Roman officer, Peter was risking ritual defilement and exclusion from his community. Nevertheless, encouraged by the Holy Spirit, Peter set off for the Roman city. When Peter heard Cornelius’s story, he finally understood the vision that he had been given. He said, “At last I see that God shows no partiality – rather that anyone of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.” And he began to teach Cornelius and his household about the marvelous things that God had done in Christ.
Did Peter finish his sermon? No, as we discover in today’s reading, the last part of this wonderful story. The Holy Spirit had one more surprising trick up her sleeve. Before Peter could finish speaking, the Holy Spirit descended on all these Gentiles. It was astonishingly clear, even to these law-abiding Jewish disciples of Jesus, that the Spirit had come on the Gentiles as well. Out in the desert, the Ethiopian Eunuch, as we heard last week had asked Philip, “There’s water. Is there anything to keep me from being baptized?” In the same way, seeing the clear signs of the Holy Spirit among Cornelius and his family, Peter asked, “What can stop these people who have received the Holy Spirit, even as we have, from being baptized with water?” Not only were they baptized, but Peter and his friends actually stayed in the Gentile house forging bonds with these new believers.
It’s hard for us to appreciate what a frightening step baptizing and accepting these Gentiles as fellow followers of the Way was for Peter. The closest analogies we have in our own time perhaps are people who had the courage to leap over the rigid racial barriers of the pre-Civil Rights American South, the Hindu caste system, or South Africa under Apartheid. Inclusion of Gentiles in what was initially a Jewish movement was unprecedented in the ancient world. Unquestionably, the observant Jews among Jesus’ first followers were astounded that the Holy Spirit would command them to proclaim the good news to Gentiles. And we know from the rest of the Book of Acts that the earliest Christians continued to struggle with God’s command to include all ethnicities, genders, nationalities, and social classes in Jesus’ beloved community. Eventually, Paul, or perhaps one of his disciples, would write convincingly to the Christian community at Ephesus of the decision to reach out to Gentiles. “Christ is our peace,” he wrote, “who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of hostility that kept us apart. In his own flesh, Christ abolished the Law…. Christ came and ‘announced the Good News of peace to you who were far away, and to those who were near….’” (Eph.3:14,17). However, it was through Peter’s first tentative and reluctant encounter with Cornelius, through the driving force of the Holy Spirit, that God laid the foundation for what God is seeking to create through the church in every age: a community bound together through allegiance to Christ, in which all divisions are forever broken down.
As we look around at St. Peter’s, do we see such a community? In some respects, we are a diverse community. And yet, as I look around me, I wonder who is missing from our community. Who is unable to share their gifts with us? Are we, for example, able to accommodate someone in a wheelchair? We know that some of our people have difficulty hearing. What are we doing to include them in worship? Can we do more for those who have limited vision? Are we adequately serving families with infants? Are there Anglicans from other parts of the world who can teach us different ways of following Jesus? Might we do more for those who live next door or who meet downstairs? Whose gifts and contributions are we missing, and to whom might the Holy Spirit want to send us, if only we were paying attention?
Mark Pinsky tells the story of the residents of a group home for people with developmental disabilities in western Pennsylvania.1 In their first attempts to attend church, the residents had been asked not to return: they were too noisy, they were disruptive, and their physical or vocal limitations made members of the congregations they were visiting uncomfortable. Finally, Pastor Sue Montgomery of Nickleville Presbyterian Church agreed to work with the group home residents. Nickleville Presbyterian was a small congregation with a profound sense of hospitality and inclusion. Not only had the congregation supported a family that had not institutionalized a disabled child, they had learned how to minister to “all sorts and conditions” of people, to people with disabilities, to those who wrestled with questions of sexual identity, to those who had been in prison, and to those who struggled with addiction. Four people committed themselves to a ministry with the group home residents that the congregation called Training Towards Self Reliance.
Within two years the group home residents were active members of the congregation. They are now full participants in Sunday morning worship and members of the extended church family. They read the lections, play instruments or sing, assist with prayers, and receive offerings. Now the congregation is ministering to residents of other group homes, with on-site services and worship in church. Even staff members, who had never before attended church, have blossomed in their participation as they lead the group home residents in proper worship behavior. People with disabilities have even participated in raising funds for the town’s food pantry. Pastor Montgomery admits that including people with developmental disabilities into their parish life has not been easy. The congregation has had to make changes to accommodate the group home members. Regular members have had to overcome their fear, uncertainty and discomfort. They have had to learn tolerance, understanding, and acceptance. They have had to come to see the group home residents the way Jean Vanier came to see the residents of the L’Arche communities: as beloved children of God, who have their own gifts to give us, their own joys to teach us, and their own deep sense of God’s love to share with us.
“At last I see that God shows no partiality…. What can stop these people who have received the Holy Spirit, even as we have, from being baptized with water?” Who is missing at St. Peter’s? I invite you to take the slip of paper in your bulletin right now. There’s a pencil in every pew. I invite you right now to answer these questions: who is missing from St. Peter’s? Who would I like to invite here? Where would I be willing to go and help lead a worship service? Put your paper in the offering basin. Sign your name if you can. And give thanks to God, that God shows no partiality, that Christ has broken down the barriers that separate us, and that the Holy Spirit is with us still, sending us out to share the Good News with all our sisters and brothers.
1. “A Spirit of Hospitality,” Alban Weekly, April 23, 2012, accessed at http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=9913&utm_source=Alban+Weekly+2012+April+23+A+Spirit+of+Hospitality&utm_campaign=amazing+gifts+facebook&utm_medium=email on May 10, 2012. Adapted from Mark I. Pinsky, Amazing Gifts: Stories of Faith, Disability, and Inclusion (Alban Institute, 2012).
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Beloved, Let Us Love One Another
Who is God? What does God expect of us? Around the turn of the first century, a beleaguered Christian community in Asia Minor (in what is now Turkey) struggled with these questions. Within their fledgling community people were arguing with each other. Even though they were deeply committed to Jesus they still disagreed about the nature of God, whether it was possible to know anything about God, who Jesus was, and how they were supposed to live out their faith. Worse yet, these Christians were a tiny minority in the vast sea of Jews, Greeks, Romans, and people of other ethnicities. Unlike those around them, they welcomed into their midst both Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free. They let both women and men lead them. They were mostly despised by their neighbors, who thought them at worst insane, or at best misguided. Amidst the tension within and the disdain and persecution without, their leaders wondered if they would survive as a community of Jesus’ disciples. And then a series of letters arrived. It wasn’t clear exactly who they were from. The writer just called him or herself “the elder.” The letters helped the Christians answer some of their questions about God and begin learning how to live out their commitment to the Way of Jesus.
Today we know these letters as the first, second, and third letters of John. In our Bibles they now come close to the end of the New Testament. While the second and third letters seem to be truly letters, the first letter, from which our Epistle reading comes this morning, seems to be more like a sermon or essay than a letter. Don’t be confused by the name! It’s unlikely that the Gospel according to John, these letters, and the Revelation to John were all written by the same person. John was a very common name in the ancient world! What is likely, though, is that the writer of these letters and the writer of the Gospel according to John shared many ideas, may have been part of similar Christian communities, and may have known some of the same accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Certainly, they used similar language to convey their ideas. If you’ve been hearing echoes of the Gospel of John in our Epistle readings, you’re in good company!
Even though as disciples of Jesus we live in a very different time and place from those ancient Christians who first heard “the elder’s” letters, we may have some of the same questions they did. As I listen to what people share in our weekday Eucharists or in our study sessions, I hear people wondering who God is for us now. Many of us are still grappling with who Jesus is, and we certainly wonder what God expects of us in the twenty-first century. Perhaps this part of “the elder’s” letter can give us some clues.
Actually, “the elder’s” first letter is hard to follow. Like Jesus’ speeches in the Gospel according to John, the writer does not follow the linear arguments so familiar to us moderns. Instead, following the high-toned rhetorical style of the ancient world, the writer keeps spiraling back and forth over similar themes. Fortunately, the portion we’ve heard this morning gives us the heart of the letter, allowing us to hear what it is truly most important. To begin with, the writer reminds us of God’s love. Indeed, we are God’s beloved. God loves us, and all creation, with a deep, active, sacrificial love. God loves us without any quid pro quo, without waiting for us to love God first, and without any expectation of a return of God’s “investment” in us. How do we know this? We know it because we believe that Jesus was truly the Word of God, who became flesh and moved into our neighborhood. We know it because we have seen in Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, the depth and breadth of God’s love for the world.
How then do we respond to the discovery of God’s sacrificial love, love which was manifested most clearly to us in Jesus’ sacrifice? If we are committed to being Jesus’ disciples, if we “abide in him,” then we respond by attempting to love, albeit perhaps feebly, in the same way that Jesus loved. And right now, let’s be clear: the love “the elder” is talking about is not a mushy, romantic love. The love “the elder” is talking about is a verb, not a noun, an action, not a feeling, a sacrifice of self for the sake of another. And, what is more important, the love we are attempting to act out in our lives goes in two directions. We are called to love God, to praise God, and to thank God for all that God has done for us. And, no surprise, we are called to love those around us, the brothers and sisters we can see. In the Gospel of Matthew we hear that loving God is the first and greatest commandment, and that second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. Here “the elder” goes one step further and suggests that love of God and love of neighbor are the same, that they are inseparable, indeed that we express our love of God through our love of our brothers and sisters. And we express our love with this assurance: that God will continue to deepen our love, continue to transform us, and continue to enable us to become more and more like Jesus himself.
Is it easy to love others in the same way that God loves them? As the community to whom “the elder” was writing knew well, it is very difficult. For that community, as for us, it is often difficult to love those who are right in our very midst. Those who live in convents and monasteries – communities dedicated to practicing and modeling God’s love – know that even in the best families and Christian communities, some of us are harder to love than others. Perhaps, though, knowing already that all of us are loved by God can help us to see that all are valued by God, and that all have a place in the Body of Christ.
I have struggled in my own life with understanding the value to God of all of God’s children. I often feel as if I have taken only baby steps in learning to love my brothers and sisters as fellow beloved children of God. As some of you know, I spent the summer of 2006 at Children’s Hospital in Columbus doing what we call clinical pastoral education, i.e., serving as a pastoral care intern. During that summer I met many severely disabled children, children who would spend their lives blind or deaf, children who would never walk, children who might never be able to dress or even toilet themselves. I struggled with how to be pastorally present to these children, children who were so different from my own competent and successful grown children. Then I began to pay more attention to the parents of these children. I remember one young mother, who patiently held her infant day by day, loving him despite his uncertain future. I remember the parents of a twelve-year old girl, lovingly giving her the most basic services as she lay inert in her bed. I remember the foster mother of two disabled children. Although she and her husband had two “normal” children, they especially felt called to foster those children whose disabilities made them unlovable for other foster parents. As I saw real love in practice in those parents, I began to share their love for their children, began to get an inkling of the goodness and value of these children, despite – or maybe because of – who they were.
I began seeing these disabled children through their parents’ eyes after reading Henri Nouwen’s account of living in a L’Arche community. The L’Arche communities were founded in France in1964 by Canadian philosopher Jean Vanier. L’Arche is the French word for shelter, and the L’Arche communities enable “normal” people to live with severely mentally challenged people. “The purpose of these specifically Christian group homes, says Vanier, is not to ‘normalize’ the disabled according to the standards of society, or to solve all their problems, which is never likely to happen, but rather to celebrate them as sacred gifts of God who have their own gifts to offer us.”1 When we first meet disabled people, suggests Vanier, we may be afraid of them. Or we may think we need to leap in and help them. But when we meet severely handicapped people, they really want to ask us just two questions: do you consider me human, and, more important, do you love me? If we meet the disabled on their own ground, says Vanier, “we behold them with wonderment and thanksgiving. We embrace them as fully human and love them for who they are. We can even see the face of God in them, for God uses the weak to confound the strong.”2
“We love because he first loved us…. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” And so we trust that as we continue to draw nearer to Jesus, as we continue to deepen our relationship with God, as we let God’s love flow through us to others, as we begin to see God in the faces of those around us, we will continue to mature in our ability to love: God’s love will be perfected in us. May it be so.
________________________
1. Daniel Clendinen, “A Father, A Son, and Two Important Questions,” Journey with Jesus, May 6, 2012, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml
2. Ibid.
Today we know these letters as the first, second, and third letters of John. In our Bibles they now come close to the end of the New Testament. While the second and third letters seem to be truly letters, the first letter, from which our Epistle reading comes this morning, seems to be more like a sermon or essay than a letter. Don’t be confused by the name! It’s unlikely that the Gospel according to John, these letters, and the Revelation to John were all written by the same person. John was a very common name in the ancient world! What is likely, though, is that the writer of these letters and the writer of the Gospel according to John shared many ideas, may have been part of similar Christian communities, and may have known some of the same accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Certainly, they used similar language to convey their ideas. If you’ve been hearing echoes of the Gospel of John in our Epistle readings, you’re in good company!
Even though as disciples of Jesus we live in a very different time and place from those ancient Christians who first heard “the elder’s” letters, we may have some of the same questions they did. As I listen to what people share in our weekday Eucharists or in our study sessions, I hear people wondering who God is for us now. Many of us are still grappling with who Jesus is, and we certainly wonder what God expects of us in the twenty-first century. Perhaps this part of “the elder’s” letter can give us some clues.
Actually, “the elder’s” first letter is hard to follow. Like Jesus’ speeches in the Gospel according to John, the writer does not follow the linear arguments so familiar to us moderns. Instead, following the high-toned rhetorical style of the ancient world, the writer keeps spiraling back and forth over similar themes. Fortunately, the portion we’ve heard this morning gives us the heart of the letter, allowing us to hear what it is truly most important. To begin with, the writer reminds us of God’s love. Indeed, we are God’s beloved. God loves us, and all creation, with a deep, active, sacrificial love. God loves us without any quid pro quo, without waiting for us to love God first, and without any expectation of a return of God’s “investment” in us. How do we know this? We know it because we believe that Jesus was truly the Word of God, who became flesh and moved into our neighborhood. We know it because we have seen in Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, the depth and breadth of God’s love for the world.
How then do we respond to the discovery of God’s sacrificial love, love which was manifested most clearly to us in Jesus’ sacrifice? If we are committed to being Jesus’ disciples, if we “abide in him,” then we respond by attempting to love, albeit perhaps feebly, in the same way that Jesus loved. And right now, let’s be clear: the love “the elder” is talking about is not a mushy, romantic love. The love “the elder” is talking about is a verb, not a noun, an action, not a feeling, a sacrifice of self for the sake of another. And, what is more important, the love we are attempting to act out in our lives goes in two directions. We are called to love God, to praise God, and to thank God for all that God has done for us. And, no surprise, we are called to love those around us, the brothers and sisters we can see. In the Gospel of Matthew we hear that loving God is the first and greatest commandment, and that second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. Here “the elder” goes one step further and suggests that love of God and love of neighbor are the same, that they are inseparable, indeed that we express our love of God through our love of our brothers and sisters. And we express our love with this assurance: that God will continue to deepen our love, continue to transform us, and continue to enable us to become more and more like Jesus himself.
Is it easy to love others in the same way that God loves them? As the community to whom “the elder” was writing knew well, it is very difficult. For that community, as for us, it is often difficult to love those who are right in our very midst. Those who live in convents and monasteries – communities dedicated to practicing and modeling God’s love – know that even in the best families and Christian communities, some of us are harder to love than others. Perhaps, though, knowing already that all of us are loved by God can help us to see that all are valued by God, and that all have a place in the Body of Christ.
I have struggled in my own life with understanding the value to God of all of God’s children. I often feel as if I have taken only baby steps in learning to love my brothers and sisters as fellow beloved children of God. As some of you know, I spent the summer of 2006 at Children’s Hospital in Columbus doing what we call clinical pastoral education, i.e., serving as a pastoral care intern. During that summer I met many severely disabled children, children who would spend their lives blind or deaf, children who would never walk, children who might never be able to dress or even toilet themselves. I struggled with how to be pastorally present to these children, children who were so different from my own competent and successful grown children. Then I began to pay more attention to the parents of these children. I remember one young mother, who patiently held her infant day by day, loving him despite his uncertain future. I remember the parents of a twelve-year old girl, lovingly giving her the most basic services as she lay inert in her bed. I remember the foster mother of two disabled children. Although she and her husband had two “normal” children, they especially felt called to foster those children whose disabilities made them unlovable for other foster parents. As I saw real love in practice in those parents, I began to share their love for their children, began to get an inkling of the goodness and value of these children, despite – or maybe because of – who they were.
I began seeing these disabled children through their parents’ eyes after reading Henri Nouwen’s account of living in a L’Arche community. The L’Arche communities were founded in France in1964 by Canadian philosopher Jean Vanier. L’Arche is the French word for shelter, and the L’Arche communities enable “normal” people to live with severely mentally challenged people. “The purpose of these specifically Christian group homes, says Vanier, is not to ‘normalize’ the disabled according to the standards of society, or to solve all their problems, which is never likely to happen, but rather to celebrate them as sacred gifts of God who have their own gifts to offer us.”1 When we first meet disabled people, suggests Vanier, we may be afraid of them. Or we may think we need to leap in and help them. But when we meet severely handicapped people, they really want to ask us just two questions: do you consider me human, and, more important, do you love me? If we meet the disabled on their own ground, says Vanier, “we behold them with wonderment and thanksgiving. We embrace them as fully human and love them for who they are. We can even see the face of God in them, for God uses the weak to confound the strong.”2
“We love because he first loved us…. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” And so we trust that as we continue to draw nearer to Jesus, as we continue to deepen our relationship with God, as we let God’s love flow through us to others, as we begin to see God in the faces of those around us, we will continue to mature in our ability to love: God’s love will be perfected in us. May it be so.
________________________
1. Daniel Clendinen, “A Father, A Son, and Two Important Questions,” Journey with Jesus, May 6, 2012, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml
2. Ibid.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Is It Still Easter?
Is it still Easter? Where are the frightened women and the astonished disciples? Why hasn’t Jesus walked through a locked door, or asked his disciples to touch his old/new body? Why this Gospel for today? Curiously, today’s Gospel reading takes us back to a pre-Easter time frame. In our Revised Common Lectionary, the fourth Sunday of Easter is always “Good Shepherd” Sunday. Every year at this point in the liturgical calendar, we hear from the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to John: verses 1-10 in Year A, today’s lection verses 11-18 for Year B, and verses 22-30 in Year C. In each case, Jesus talks about the Good Shepherd and the sheep who know him. In this celebratory time between Easter and Pentecost, how does this image help us to comprehend the risen Christ? Since most of us know very little about shepherds and sheep and would resist being compared to sheep, what does the church want us to hear in this Gospel?
Let’s remember the context of John’s gospel. Remember that this version of Jesus’ life was written in the ‘90s, when conflicts between the ethnically diverse Christian communities and the more orthodox Jewish religious leadership were increasing. John’s gospel is filled with Jesus’ long speeches emphasizing the contrast between those who follow him and those who don’t. In this gospel, Jesus intentionally uses language that points to his divine status. He makes key statements that begin with “I am,” echoing God’s name for Godself. Remember too that in this section Jesus is not speaking to his own followers, he is speaking to the Pharisees. And he is saying something important about himself.
Actually, when Jesus called himself the “Good Shepherd,” the Pharisees knew exactly what he was saying to them. They knew their Scripture. They knew that Jesus was using an image that went all the way back to Genesis. They knew that in chapter 49 of Genesis Jacob reminded his sons that Joseph would be protected “by the name of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel, by the God of your fathers…. (Gen. 49:24). Of course, they knew the Psalter, especially the declaration in Psalm 23 that “The Lord is my shepherd.” Perhaps most important they knew Ezekiel’s use of the image of God as shepherd, especially Ezekiel’s assurance that, “’You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God,’ says the Lord God” (Ezek. 34:31). Hearing Jesus use this image of the Good Shepherd, the Pharisees knew immediately that Jesus was asserting his divine status, and that he was reminding them that he was God’s own Son.
In an Easter tide context, Jesus’ self-description as God the Good Shepherd gives us another way of thinking about resurrection and its importance in our lives. If you think about the resurrection appearances we’ve heard about this Easter tide, one of the things that might strike you is Jesus’ freedom to appear wherever and to whom Jesus chooses. In his resurrection life, Jesus demonstrates that he will respond to the needs of his followers, whether those followers need to be released from their fears, whether they need to be convinced that he has been raised, or whether they need to understand that he has fulfilled God’s promises. However, Jesus’ appearances also clearly demonstrate that Jesus takes the initiative and comes to those in need – even before they ask him to come. Our texts for today also remind us that God gives God’s gifts, including the gift of Jesus’ death on the cross, of God’s own free will. In Psalm 23, clearly God does all the giving. The psalmist cannot make God provide nourishment and protection. God cannot be compelled, but God can be relied on to provide. In the same way, Jesus reminds the Pharisees that he will go to the Cross – and regain his life – freely and through his own power: what Jesus will accomplish through his death and resurrection will ultimately be God’s freely given gift. The gift will be on God’s terms and at God’s initiative, and there is nothing they – or we – can do to compel or retard God’s power.
One of the gifts that God’s Son promises us is the gift of community. In today’s Gospel, Jesus also reminds the Pharisees – and by extension us – that God the Good Shepherd does more than know the sheep by name, care for them, protect them, and even die for them. God the Good Shepherd also gathers the sheep. God the Good Shepherd draws the sheep together into a single flock. As the new Christian communities of John’s day struggled with ethnic, social, and economic diversity, the Gospel writer reminded them that, God’s promises were made not only to the Jews but ultimately to all people. All, regardless of who they are, are known by name, cared for, and invited into membership in the community formed by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Because the relationship within Jesus’ flock will reflect the love between Jesus and his Father, Jesus’ flock will be a community unified by mutual love.
Do we live in such a community of mutual love? Certainly, one can survey the world wide church and wonder when we might see Jesus’ promised blessed flock. Perhaps the church from its very beginning was fractured. We know from Paul’s letters that early communities experienced tensions between Jews and Gentiles. Even largely Gentile Christian communities struggled with social, economic, and ethnic differences. The Council of Nicaea, which hoped to put to rest much theological conflict by crafting a comprehensive statement of faith, did not settle all the theological arguments of its time. The Western Church, centered in Rome, split with the Eastern Church, centered in Constantinople, in 854. The Reformation shattered the unity of the Western Church, and Christian bodies have been splintering ever since.
Do we live in such a blessed community here in Gallipolis, here at St. Peter’s? In our 24/7 world, many of us have virtual communities. But do we have real community? Do we have real community in this parish, or are we hollow within? We might ask ourselves what kind of community God yearns to create here. God’s community, as we see it in the Gospels, is an open and inclusive community. Jesus did not exclude anyone on the basis of their ethnicity, wealth, health, or disability. Are we an inclusive community, a diverse community, a community where those who need God’s nurture, care, and protection might hope to find it? How are we cooperating with God in helping to create a flock whose members are clearly able to hear Jesus’ voice? John’s Gospel is clear: the work of gathering the flock belongs to God and Jesus; our work is to provide a place where all may feel welcome, where all may grow in love, where all may deepen their relationship with God and with each other.
How might we strengthen our bonds as a Christian community? Worshipping together regularly is one way. Participating in Christian formation is another way. We know that we cannot command God to nurture and care for us, any more than we can compel each other to come through the red doors. However, there is one thing we can always do. We can pray, we can make our needs known to God. We can let God know that we care about this parish, its health, and its future. We can assure God that we care about the people in this parish, and that we are prepared to share with them our own experiences of God’s love. We can ask God to fulfill God’s promise to create a strong healthy community is this place.
So here is my challenge to you for the coming week: pray! You might start by thanking God for all God’s gifts to us, as individuals and as a parish. Next, choose one person in the parish. Look around you: choose someone whom you see right now. Commit to praying for that person all week. You don’t need to say long complicated prayers. Simply lift that person up to God during your regular prayers or whenever you can. Then, think of someone who is not here but might be. Commit to praying in the same way for that person too all week. Finally, pray for this parish. Start with prayer number eleven on page 817 of the Prayer Book. Try saying it daily, if you can. In fact, let’s say it together now. [Turn to page 817, read the prayer together.]
It’s still Easter. As we are reminded yet again that we are a community led by a Good Shepherd, we continue to be assured of God’s free and gracious love for us as individuals and of God’s promise to draw all those who love God into a single, blessed community in Jesus’ name.
Let’s remember the context of John’s gospel. Remember that this version of Jesus’ life was written in the ‘90s, when conflicts between the ethnically diverse Christian communities and the more orthodox Jewish religious leadership were increasing. John’s gospel is filled with Jesus’ long speeches emphasizing the contrast between those who follow him and those who don’t. In this gospel, Jesus intentionally uses language that points to his divine status. He makes key statements that begin with “I am,” echoing God’s name for Godself. Remember too that in this section Jesus is not speaking to his own followers, he is speaking to the Pharisees. And he is saying something important about himself.
Actually, when Jesus called himself the “Good Shepherd,” the Pharisees knew exactly what he was saying to them. They knew their Scripture. They knew that Jesus was using an image that went all the way back to Genesis. They knew that in chapter 49 of Genesis Jacob reminded his sons that Joseph would be protected “by the name of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel, by the God of your fathers…. (Gen. 49:24). Of course, they knew the Psalter, especially the declaration in Psalm 23 that “The Lord is my shepherd.” Perhaps most important they knew Ezekiel’s use of the image of God as shepherd, especially Ezekiel’s assurance that, “’You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God,’ says the Lord God” (Ezek. 34:31). Hearing Jesus use this image of the Good Shepherd, the Pharisees knew immediately that Jesus was asserting his divine status, and that he was reminding them that he was God’s own Son.
In an Easter tide context, Jesus’ self-description as God the Good Shepherd gives us another way of thinking about resurrection and its importance in our lives. If you think about the resurrection appearances we’ve heard about this Easter tide, one of the things that might strike you is Jesus’ freedom to appear wherever and to whom Jesus chooses. In his resurrection life, Jesus demonstrates that he will respond to the needs of his followers, whether those followers need to be released from their fears, whether they need to be convinced that he has been raised, or whether they need to understand that he has fulfilled God’s promises. However, Jesus’ appearances also clearly demonstrate that Jesus takes the initiative and comes to those in need – even before they ask him to come. Our texts for today also remind us that God gives God’s gifts, including the gift of Jesus’ death on the cross, of God’s own free will. In Psalm 23, clearly God does all the giving. The psalmist cannot make God provide nourishment and protection. God cannot be compelled, but God can be relied on to provide. In the same way, Jesus reminds the Pharisees that he will go to the Cross – and regain his life – freely and through his own power: what Jesus will accomplish through his death and resurrection will ultimately be God’s freely given gift. The gift will be on God’s terms and at God’s initiative, and there is nothing they – or we – can do to compel or retard God’s power.
One of the gifts that God’s Son promises us is the gift of community. In today’s Gospel, Jesus also reminds the Pharisees – and by extension us – that God the Good Shepherd does more than know the sheep by name, care for them, protect them, and even die for them. God the Good Shepherd also gathers the sheep. God the Good Shepherd draws the sheep together into a single flock. As the new Christian communities of John’s day struggled with ethnic, social, and economic diversity, the Gospel writer reminded them that, God’s promises were made not only to the Jews but ultimately to all people. All, regardless of who they are, are known by name, cared for, and invited into membership in the community formed by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Because the relationship within Jesus’ flock will reflect the love between Jesus and his Father, Jesus’ flock will be a community unified by mutual love.
Do we live in such a community of mutual love? Certainly, one can survey the world wide church and wonder when we might see Jesus’ promised blessed flock. Perhaps the church from its very beginning was fractured. We know from Paul’s letters that early communities experienced tensions between Jews and Gentiles. Even largely Gentile Christian communities struggled with social, economic, and ethnic differences. The Council of Nicaea, which hoped to put to rest much theological conflict by crafting a comprehensive statement of faith, did not settle all the theological arguments of its time. The Western Church, centered in Rome, split with the Eastern Church, centered in Constantinople, in 854. The Reformation shattered the unity of the Western Church, and Christian bodies have been splintering ever since.
Do we live in such a blessed community here in Gallipolis, here at St. Peter’s? In our 24/7 world, many of us have virtual communities. But do we have real community? Do we have real community in this parish, or are we hollow within? We might ask ourselves what kind of community God yearns to create here. God’s community, as we see it in the Gospels, is an open and inclusive community. Jesus did not exclude anyone on the basis of their ethnicity, wealth, health, or disability. Are we an inclusive community, a diverse community, a community where those who need God’s nurture, care, and protection might hope to find it? How are we cooperating with God in helping to create a flock whose members are clearly able to hear Jesus’ voice? John’s Gospel is clear: the work of gathering the flock belongs to God and Jesus; our work is to provide a place where all may feel welcome, where all may grow in love, where all may deepen their relationship with God and with each other.
How might we strengthen our bonds as a Christian community? Worshipping together regularly is one way. Participating in Christian formation is another way. We know that we cannot command God to nurture and care for us, any more than we can compel each other to come through the red doors. However, there is one thing we can always do. We can pray, we can make our needs known to God. We can let God know that we care about this parish, its health, and its future. We can assure God that we care about the people in this parish, and that we are prepared to share with them our own experiences of God’s love. We can ask God to fulfill God’s promise to create a strong healthy community is this place.
So here is my challenge to you for the coming week: pray! You might start by thanking God for all God’s gifts to us, as individuals and as a parish. Next, choose one person in the parish. Look around you: choose someone whom you see right now. Commit to praying for that person all week. You don’t need to say long complicated prayers. Simply lift that person up to God during your regular prayers or whenever you can. Then, think of someone who is not here but might be. Commit to praying in the same way for that person too all week. Finally, pray for this parish. Start with prayer number eleven on page 817 of the Prayer Book. Try saying it daily, if you can. In fact, let’s say it together now. [Turn to page 817, read the prayer together.]
It’s still Easter. As we are reminded yet again that we are a community led by a Good Shepherd, we continue to be assured of God’s free and gracious love for us as individuals and of God’s promise to draw all those who love God into a single, blessed community in Jesus’ name.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
It's Still Easter
It’s still Easter! Of course, it’s still Easter tide in the church and will be until Pentecost on May 27th this year. It’s also still Easter in our Gospel for today – although Jesus and the disciples seem to be keeping very late hours. And what a tumultuous day it has been! It began at early dawn as a group of women went to Jesus’ tomb, found it empty, and met two men in dazzling white clothes who assured them that, just as he had promised, Jesus had risen. Although no one believed the women when they went to tell the other disciples, Peter ran to the tomb, looked in, and was amazed. Then Jesus caught up with two of disciples walking to the village of Emmaus, about six miles from Jerusalem. Although they didn’t at first recognize Jesus, he explained to them how God had delivered on all the promises God had made in Scripture. Since it was evening, they invited him to stay with them. When he took bread, blessed, broke, and gave it to them, they recognized him. When Jesus vanished, the two disciples leapt up and ran back to Jerusalem, to tell the eleven and their friends what had happened. Late as it was, Jesus came among them again. He still had more to tell them – even on this first day!
It’s not easy to make sense of all the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection appearances. The Gospels clearly don’t agree on what or how it happened that Jesus was alive again after his execution. Our reading last week from the Gospel according to John suggests a slightly different series of events from Luke’s portrayal of that first Easter. Certainly resurrection was and is hard to get our minds around. Yet, if we look at the resurrection accounts, especially those of John and Luke, we find that they are remarkably similar in what they tell us. Notice that in Luke’s account of the Easter evening meeting in Jerusalem, Jesus offers the disciples the same assurance of forgiveness and reconciliation that he had offered in John’s account. “Peace be with you,” he greets them, as he miraculously enters the room. He offers the disciples confirmation, even proof, that he is not a ghost but a truly, living body, by commanding them to look at him and even to touch him. Did they need further proof that he was not ghost? He told them he was hungry and ate a piece of fish. Then, just as he had done with the depressed disciples on the long walk to Emmaus, he explained how all that God had promised in the Scriptures had now been fulfilled in his resurrection. And, finally, and perhaps most importantly, he commissioned his friends to spread the good news to others reminding them that, “You are witnesses of these things.”
The disciples don’t speak in Luke’s account of this late night meeting with Jesus. Nevertheless, as Luke tells us, Jesus’ appearance among them unleashed a barrage of emotions in them. Hearing his greeting of peace, they were “startled and terrified.” When Jesus reassured them that he was not a ghost, invited them to touch him and ate with them, the disciples were joyful and yet also incredulous. After Jesus explained the Scripture to them, perhaps the disciples were enlightened. Perhaps they were now ready to take the risk of beginning to spread the good news about Jesus, to “proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins” to people of all nationalities and ethnicities.
Or maybe not. Perhaps that one encounter with Jesus wasn’t enough to dispel all their fears and to equip them as preachers and proclaimers of the good news. Surely they must have continued to have questions. Perhaps even some of the same questions we might have. What kind of a body did he really have, that the disciples could actually touch it? Why did the disciples at first have trouble recognizing Jesus, even though they had spent so much time with him? How could he just come and go as he pleased, turn up in different places at will, even walk through walls? How did he know what was troubling them, so that he could respond to their questions? And hardest of all: was that really Jesus whom they encountered? Surely, Jesus’ disciples and friends struggled with these questions long after the late-evening meeting described in our Gospel reading. After all, it took the original witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection years to come to grips with these questions: nearly thirty years for the writer of the Gospel of Mark, perhaps forty or fifty for the writers of Matthew and Luke, almost sixty for the writer of John’s Gospel.
We could ask our own questions ad infinitum. And scholars much more learned than I have written tomes, examining every point of the resurrection stories. While I have deep respect for Biblical scholarship, in the end we are not called to be merely intellectually convinced that Jesus was raised. Rather we are asked as followers and disciples of Jesus to put our faith in those original witnesses, to trust those who followed them, to look for evidence of Jesus’ new life in ourselves and our faith communities, and to share with others what we have experienced, the things to which we are witnesses. Yet we know that developing trust, recognizing the signs of Jesus’ work among us, and risking sharing our faith with others are all hard work. Conversion, new birth in Christ doesn’t happen overnight. Anglican priest David Runcorn tells of a woman who described the realities of spiritual birth. “Any woman knows,” she tells us, “that birth is long and slow, very painful and very messy. You expose the most embarrassing parts of yourself and are so vulnerable that you are past caring. If that is what real birth is like, then why should spiritual birth be any different?”1 If you still have doubts and questions about the resurrection, you’re in good company. Resurrection is a reality that takes us decades to realize fully in our own lives. Even so, we have God’s promise that Jesus continues to come to us, to reassure us, to teach us, to equip us to carry out his ministry in the world, and to transform us.
Our Gospel stories suggest that there is a way that that transformation happens most effectively in our lives. And that is when we remain in community with each other. Notice that in almost every resurrection story recorded in our Gospels, Jesus comes to a group of disciples: the women who heard the angel’s proclamation in Mark’s account, the group gathered behind locked doors in John’s account, the women whose outlandish tale of the empty tomb was considered nonsense, the pair on the road to Emmaus, and, finally, this gathering of the eleven and their companions. It is in community with each other that Jesus is most likely to come to us, to reassure, enlighten, and commission us, to transform us from spectators of the events of Easter into participants in them.
“You are witnesses of these things,” Jesus reminded the disciples, as he sent them out to proclaim the good news to all nations. To whom are we called to be witnesses? Now you might think that I am about to launch into another plea for evangelism at this point. Mission on the other side of the red doors is important, to be sure. Inviting friends and relatives to worship with us is also important, to be sure. However, I’ve been thinking about our parish as a Christian community, as a place where as a body we may witness to each other. It has become more and more clear to me that maturing as Jesus’ disciples and companions and growing in our ability to appreciate and share the good news of life in the risen Christ take place most often and most effectively in groups. It is in community that we share insights with each other, encourage each other in faith, and witness to each other of our day to day experiences with Christ. It is in community that we let others in on the struggles we have had with grasping the meaning of new life in Christ. It is in community that we pose our questions about Scripture to each other, and it is in community that Jesus helps us to see the relationship between the truths of Scripture and our own lives.
Which brings me to St. Peter’s. You have heard me preach a lot about mission and ministry to others. Our participation in the Common Ministry program is helping us understand better who we are, so that we can be better and more effective ministers to those among whom God has placed us. However, I also believe that God has called us to be more intentional about the kind of community we have internally, about what our in-reach is, if you will. Besides Sunday worship, what holds us together as a community? How are we nurturing and supporting each other? How are we witnessing to each other? I challenge you to reflect with me, to help us all find those ways in which we can share the doubts, sorrows, and joys of Christian life more intimately with each other. Are we willing to grow – as a body – in our ability to witness to each other?
If we are, then perhaps we can pray wholeheartedly, O God, we give you thanks for the gift of resurrection life. May we know in our lives, both as individuals and as a parish, that the crucified one is alive and comes to us: turn our doubts and disbelief into awe and wonder, until we all rejoice together in the glory and presence of the risen Lord.2
______________________
1. Quoted in Donald Runcorn, Rumours of Resurrection (London: Darnton, Longman and Todd, 1996), 2).
2. Based on David Adam, Traces of Glory (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1999), 67.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Conversation Not Condemnation
Have you eaten all the jelly beans? By now, you’ve probably made all the hardboiled Easter eggs into egg salad sandwiches or casseroles. Have you eaten all the Cadbury crème eggs, the Peeps, and the chocolate bunnies and put away the Easter baskets and the plastic grass? Easter is over, right? So, what’s wrong with us church people? Our festal paraments are still up, I’m still wearing my white and gold vestments, and the Paschal candle is still burning. My friends, we do all this, because it’s still Easter! Actually, it’s still Easter in two ways. This week we have been observing the Octave of Easter, the eight days following Easter, culminating in today. Why eight? In ancient Jewish tradition, the number eight symbolized completion, wholeness, and re-creation. After Easter for many new Christians, the eighth day, i.e., every Sunday, became a day to meet again the risen Christ and experience re-creation again. So during this week especially, the church invited us to reflect on how we meet Jesus in our own lives, and how God continues to make all things new.
But there’s another way in which it is still Easter. We are now in Easter tide, or Easter season, fifty days in which we celebrate the joy of the resurrection, fifty days in which we can shout “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” Why a whole season? Because, it takes us much more than a single day to have some inkling of what the resurrection, God’s victory over death, really means. It takes us more than one day to understand the transformation that God offers us in the risen Christ. It takes us more than one day to offer adequate praise and thanksgiving for what God has done for us. Presbyterian pastor L.P. Jones reminds us that, “Celebrating the season of Easter allows us to declare the appearance of the risen Lord too profound and life changing to limit our responses to a single day or week. We need a week of weeks for news this good and hope this profound!”1
We need a week of weeks for news this good and hope this profound! No doubt those who first experienced the risen Lord needed much more than a week of weeks. Even those who had been closest to Jesus in his earthly life had trouble at first recognizing the risen Jesus. Perhaps like us, they had trouble getting their minds to accept the possibility that he had fulfilled his promises to them, and that he was actually alive again.
Just look at the various Gospel stories. Last week, we heard how the three women were terrified and amazed at the angel’s declaration that, “He has been raised; he is not here.” Indeed, they were so terrified that, in the original ending to Mark’s Gospel, they just ran away. In Matthew’s Gospel we are told that “some doubted.” This week at our Wednesday Eucharist we heard Luke’s account of the conversation on the road to Emmaus. The disciples walked perhaps several miles with Jesus but didn’t recognize him until he broke bread with them. Just before today’s reading from the Gospel of John, we hear the story of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Lord. Having seen the stone rolled back from the tomb, she ran to tell Peter and the other disciple. They came, looked at the tomb and ran back. Mary remained at the tomb, and Jesus came to her. Did she recognize him? Not until he called her by name. But then she followed Jesus’ command and promptly told the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” And did they believe her? Clearly not, since later that evening they were still huddled together in fear behind locked doors! Then, after the disciples had seen Jesus and said to Thomas, “We have seen the Lord,” did he believe them? Not at all!
Yes, they all had a hard time believing that Jesus had done what he had said he would do! And what was Jesus’ reaction to their doubts? He was a little sharp with the guys on the road to Emmaus. “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared,” he said. But did he chastise Mary for thinking he was the gardener? No, he just said, gently, I’m sure, “Don’t grab on to me.” Jesus knew how difficult it was to grasp what had happened that day – it still is! And so, when he came to the frightened disciples that evening, he didn’t say, “What’s the matter with you guys, didn’t you believe me?” And he certainly didn’t say, “Where were you all while I was up there dying on that cross? How come you all ran away?” No, he said to them, “Peace be with you.” And this was more than a casual greeting. In effect, at that moment Jesus extended forgiveness to all his friends and disciples for having abandoned him at the cross. And more, he then gave them the signs that they needed to understand that he was really there with them. He showed them his hands and his side. At last they got it! They “rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”
Apparently, Thomas needed something more than the disciples’ report of their encounter. When Jesus returned the following week, did he say to Thomas, “What’s the matter with you? Why didn’t you believe them?” No, he offered the concrete proof of his risen reality that Thomas thought he needed. “Put your finger here and see my hands,” he said. “Reach out your hand and put it in my side.” Then Thomas too got it! He didn’t even need to touch Jesus, he understood at last that he was truly seeing and hearing the risen Lord.
Do you notice any thread running through all these encounters with the risen Lord? In no case does Jesus reject or condemn people for not believing God’s promises or for finding it hard to come to grips with the resurrection. And in every case, Jesus takes the initiative. He comes to his friends and disciples and gives them what they need to believe that he has indeed overcome death and is alive again to them. This is the good news! Jesus does what he has to do to recall his friends to life. Their doubts and unbelief will not keep him from calling and caring for his friends. Their response? To joyfully go out and tell others – as he has commissioned them to do!
And so it is for us. For, today’s Gospel is not ultimately about the disciples and Thomas. It is about who Jesus is, and, more importantly, how Jesus comes to us, wherever we might be. We too may wonder. We too may have trouble getting our heads around the resurrection – or any other aspect of church life and belief. When we say the Nicene Creed, or even the simpler Apostles Creed, we may not be absolutely certain of everything that the church is proclaiming in those creeds. In the sorrows and losses of our lives, doubt may overcome hope, and Easter joy may disappear into thin air. Grief and tragedy shake the foundations of our faith. Serene Jones reminds us that it is in those very moments that God comes to us. “God comes seeking us, stepping through the walls that hardship builds around us, offering love at the very moment that grace seems nothing but a farcical ghost story told by not-to-be-believed friends.”2
Sometimes God may come to us when we grieve alone – as Jesus came to Mary weeping outside the tomb. Perhaps we will sense Jesus’ presence when his peace descends on us in prayer. Perhaps we will understand, despite the violence around us, despite our losses and our pain, despite the death of loved ones, that we are not alone, that, indeed Jesus has been coming to us, supporting us, and caring for us all along. More often, though, God comes to us in community. Even though the disciples to whom Mary delivered her report did not believe her, they remained together as a community. Thomas did not believe his friends, but he stayed with them the following week. And, as the writer of John’s Gospel reminds us, we are now part of that community, and Jesus comes to us as well. We may not have seen what they saw, but because we believed through their testimony, Jesus can be present with us.
Ultimately, it is the community of the church that holds the good news for us, and in that community, there is room for all our questions and doubts. For, rest assured, the church exists not just for those who are absolutely certain of what and who they are. Beware of the danger of pride and arrogance in that absolute certainty! The church exists for those who seek God, most especially a deeper knowledge of God. And we need each other’s support on this difficult journey of faith. We need each other’s support in recognizing God’s presence among us, and we need each other’s help in fulfilling the commission that Jesus gives us when we do recognize him. Thanks be to God that Jesus comes to us again and again and continues to strengthen our faith and our commitment to him. Thanks be to God that our brothers and sisters in the faith – and that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us – uphold us in our journey. “We may not touch his hands and side, nor follow where he trod; but in his promise we rejoice; and cry, “My Lord and God!”
1. “Easter,” in New Proclamation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012, 1).
2. In Feasting on the Word (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 402.
But there’s another way in which it is still Easter. We are now in Easter tide, or Easter season, fifty days in which we celebrate the joy of the resurrection, fifty days in which we can shout “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” Why a whole season? Because, it takes us much more than a single day to have some inkling of what the resurrection, God’s victory over death, really means. It takes us more than one day to understand the transformation that God offers us in the risen Christ. It takes us more than one day to offer adequate praise and thanksgiving for what God has done for us. Presbyterian pastor L.P. Jones reminds us that, “Celebrating the season of Easter allows us to declare the appearance of the risen Lord too profound and life changing to limit our responses to a single day or week. We need a week of weeks for news this good and hope this profound!”1
We need a week of weeks for news this good and hope this profound! No doubt those who first experienced the risen Lord needed much more than a week of weeks. Even those who had been closest to Jesus in his earthly life had trouble at first recognizing the risen Jesus. Perhaps like us, they had trouble getting their minds to accept the possibility that he had fulfilled his promises to them, and that he was actually alive again.
Just look at the various Gospel stories. Last week, we heard how the three women were terrified and amazed at the angel’s declaration that, “He has been raised; he is not here.” Indeed, they were so terrified that, in the original ending to Mark’s Gospel, they just ran away. In Matthew’s Gospel we are told that “some doubted.” This week at our Wednesday Eucharist we heard Luke’s account of the conversation on the road to Emmaus. The disciples walked perhaps several miles with Jesus but didn’t recognize him until he broke bread with them. Just before today’s reading from the Gospel of John, we hear the story of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Lord. Having seen the stone rolled back from the tomb, she ran to tell Peter and the other disciple. They came, looked at the tomb and ran back. Mary remained at the tomb, and Jesus came to her. Did she recognize him? Not until he called her by name. But then she followed Jesus’ command and promptly told the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” And did they believe her? Clearly not, since later that evening they were still huddled together in fear behind locked doors! Then, after the disciples had seen Jesus and said to Thomas, “We have seen the Lord,” did he believe them? Not at all!
Yes, they all had a hard time believing that Jesus had done what he had said he would do! And what was Jesus’ reaction to their doubts? He was a little sharp with the guys on the road to Emmaus. “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared,” he said. But did he chastise Mary for thinking he was the gardener? No, he just said, gently, I’m sure, “Don’t grab on to me.” Jesus knew how difficult it was to grasp what had happened that day – it still is! And so, when he came to the frightened disciples that evening, he didn’t say, “What’s the matter with you guys, didn’t you believe me?” And he certainly didn’t say, “Where were you all while I was up there dying on that cross? How come you all ran away?” No, he said to them, “Peace be with you.” And this was more than a casual greeting. In effect, at that moment Jesus extended forgiveness to all his friends and disciples for having abandoned him at the cross. And more, he then gave them the signs that they needed to understand that he was really there with them. He showed them his hands and his side. At last they got it! They “rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”
Apparently, Thomas needed something more than the disciples’ report of their encounter. When Jesus returned the following week, did he say to Thomas, “What’s the matter with you? Why didn’t you believe them?” No, he offered the concrete proof of his risen reality that Thomas thought he needed. “Put your finger here and see my hands,” he said. “Reach out your hand and put it in my side.” Then Thomas too got it! He didn’t even need to touch Jesus, he understood at last that he was truly seeing and hearing the risen Lord.
Do you notice any thread running through all these encounters with the risen Lord? In no case does Jesus reject or condemn people for not believing God’s promises or for finding it hard to come to grips with the resurrection. And in every case, Jesus takes the initiative. He comes to his friends and disciples and gives them what they need to believe that he has indeed overcome death and is alive again to them. This is the good news! Jesus does what he has to do to recall his friends to life. Their doubts and unbelief will not keep him from calling and caring for his friends. Their response? To joyfully go out and tell others – as he has commissioned them to do!
And so it is for us. For, today’s Gospel is not ultimately about the disciples and Thomas. It is about who Jesus is, and, more importantly, how Jesus comes to us, wherever we might be. We too may wonder. We too may have trouble getting our heads around the resurrection – or any other aspect of church life and belief. When we say the Nicene Creed, or even the simpler Apostles Creed, we may not be absolutely certain of everything that the church is proclaiming in those creeds. In the sorrows and losses of our lives, doubt may overcome hope, and Easter joy may disappear into thin air. Grief and tragedy shake the foundations of our faith. Serene Jones reminds us that it is in those very moments that God comes to us. “God comes seeking us, stepping through the walls that hardship builds around us, offering love at the very moment that grace seems nothing but a farcical ghost story told by not-to-be-believed friends.”2
Sometimes God may come to us when we grieve alone – as Jesus came to Mary weeping outside the tomb. Perhaps we will sense Jesus’ presence when his peace descends on us in prayer. Perhaps we will understand, despite the violence around us, despite our losses and our pain, despite the death of loved ones, that we are not alone, that, indeed Jesus has been coming to us, supporting us, and caring for us all along. More often, though, God comes to us in community. Even though the disciples to whom Mary delivered her report did not believe her, they remained together as a community. Thomas did not believe his friends, but he stayed with them the following week. And, as the writer of John’s Gospel reminds us, we are now part of that community, and Jesus comes to us as well. We may not have seen what they saw, but because we believed through their testimony, Jesus can be present with us.
Ultimately, it is the community of the church that holds the good news for us, and in that community, there is room for all our questions and doubts. For, rest assured, the church exists not just for those who are absolutely certain of what and who they are. Beware of the danger of pride and arrogance in that absolute certainty! The church exists for those who seek God, most especially a deeper knowledge of God. And we need each other’s support on this difficult journey of faith. We need each other’s support in recognizing God’s presence among us, and we need each other’s help in fulfilling the commission that Jesus gives us when we do recognize him. Thanks be to God that Jesus comes to us again and again and continues to strengthen our faith and our commitment to him. Thanks be to God that our brothers and sisters in the faith – and that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us – uphold us in our journey. “We may not touch his hands and side, nor follow where he trod; but in his promise we rejoice; and cry, “My Lord and God!”
1. “Easter,” in New Proclamation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012, 1).
2. In Feasting on the Word (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 402.
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