and then skips ahead exactly one week later, just as we contemplate this story exactly one week after Easter Sunday.
Our reading today ends with a statement that there were many other signs and wonders that Jesus did, but that THIS story was chosen to aid us in our belief. One wonders at the idea that this story is meant to help us believe. Surely some of those other stories would have been more inspiring, more persuasive.
I personally, as a mother, hope that one of the stories omitted was Jesus returning to see his mother, calling her “Imma,” which means “Mama” rather than “Attha” which means “woman,” as we heard from the cross in John’s gospel. I believe this because I believe Jesus loved and adored his mother, despite what some of the gospel writers depict.
Our reading today ends with a statement that there were many other signs and wonders that Jesus did, but that THIS story was chosen to aid us in our belief. One wonders at the idea that this story is meant to help us believe. Surely some of those other stories would have been more inspiring, more persuasive.
I personally, as a mother, hope that one of the stories omitted was Jesus returning to see his mother, calling her “Imma,” which means “Mama” rather than “Attha” which means “woman,” as we heard from the cross in John’s gospel. I believe this because I believe Jesus loved and adored his mother, despite what some of the gospel writers depict.
Jesus is his mother's son. Read the Magnificat, and you know where Jesus got the courage to overturn those tables in the Temple. Consider a 14- or 15-year old girl embedded in a culture that made her a pawn or possession, having the audacity to consider and say yes to God despite what it could potentially cost her, and you see where Jesus gets the courage and resolution and passion for his earthly ministry.
I pray that this meeting took place also because I also think of one of the last images in popular art of Mary with Jesus: that of the Pieta—whose name means “Pity,” or “Compassion.” After my mom took my brother and myself to Rome when I was seven, one of the things she carried back all through that journey was a smaller, about 8 inch high copy of the Pieta, a sculpture by Michelangelo that we had seen in the Vatican. It was made out of marble, too-- and so it was NOT light.
In this statue, Michaelangelo depicted the crucified Jesus sprawled across his grieving mother’s lap. I think of the Pieta, and I think that Jesus would have gone to his mother and given her a personal chance for that image to not be the last image she had of her beloved first born. I think Jesus would have wanted to bring his mother’s broken heart to healing, because healing was the core of who he was and is. He would have wanted to show her his scars too, as a sign of his ongoing life, rather than leaving her with the image of his death.
I picture the risen Christ appearing before his mother in her house full of mourners just as he appears to these disciples in their locked room. Because if he did, he would hear her call him not Jesus which is the Greek form of his name. No, Mary would breathlessly cry out his true name of “Yeshua,” which means “Salvation” in Aramaic.
It is always important for us to remember that everything we read in scripture is not just translation, but it is often a translation of a translation of a translation in the New Testament especially, going backwards from English to Biblical Greek to possibly Hebrew and then Aramaic, the milk-language of Jesus and his followers.
I picture this scene as one of the regrettably omitted stories from John’s gospel because the word “salvation” is another word that has gotten twisted about in our modern religious language just a bit. Too many people hear that word and think that all it means is about what happens after we die, and two divergent tracks then appear, so that “salvation” becomes a kind of fork in the road.
The first track is that people are told salvation is about the afterlife. And they think of all those images of hellfire and brimstone and eternal torture for those condemned, images that even show up on Saturday Night Live--and what is more secular than Saturday Night Live, when you think about it? They think of those images, and even behind the cartoonish quality in popular culture they get scared, and then they turn this whole “following Jesus” thing from a relationship to a transaction, as we Americans are particularly prone to do.
We love transactions for the neatness of them. We especially love to get a “bargain.” And so, soon, salvation becomes a bargain with God, to see what the lowest price to get ourselves some of this “heaven” thing:
And for too many of these people, there is a reason why feeling that pull to cross the threshhold of a church is painful. The Big C, institutional Church, fallible and made up of fallible human beings as it is, has hurt them. It has told them that Christianity is about judging others and demanding sacrifices of their essential natures that those same judgmental ones would never even consider in their own lives. It’s a Christianity that looks for scapegoats while completely missing the irony that Jesus himself served exactly as that in the politics between the common people and the power of empire.
It’s a false Christianity, that tries to justify hating certain people into repentance-- like that ever works! It's behind a bill brought up in Arkansas recently that sought to give medical professionals who identify as Christian the right to refuse to treat people if they suspect they are LGBTQ—all in the name of the same Jesus we see today inviting people to see his wounds as signs of his realness. Or there are people who have been shamed for questioning, for doubting, like that’s a bad thing—just like poor old Thomas there, who gets that damning “Doubting” adjective permanently glued in front of his name forever, even though what he experiences is SO common and relatable.
Going back to church for those who have been hurt and marginalized by this kind of Christianity is more like returning to the scene of a crime than getting your spiritual batteries recharged. And those of us who identify ourselves as actively Christian thus are presented with our first chance to ourselves take part in the salvation of Jesus which bring healing and reconciliation. And we don’t even have to do it by glomming onto every stranger that walks through our doors, especially at Easter.
We don’t have to do this work by starting at trying to scare people into belief-- and by that I mean a bargain with God so that they can avoid “hell.” We do this by revealing salvation as a life moving toward healing even for those who feel like they have no hope of being loved for who they are. We can start by actually SEEING everyone the same way that Jesus did—as beloved. Beloved as we all are and not excluded due to some checklist created by fearful people. Beloved even as we all are, even as we find our ways out of various wildernesses like addiction, racism, homophobia, taking advantage of others, or misogyny.
Jesus showed his own scars to his believers after resurrection because our scars are the signs that we all bear of what has shaped us, for good or for ill. We are all known by our scars—and with what we do with them. Do we use them as excuses to hurt others and leave scars of our own as we pass by? Or do we see them as signs that we have persevered and have healed? After Jesus shows his scars as a sign that the cross did not have the last word with him, Jesus commissions his followers—including you and me, even those of us who have to cross our fingers behind our backs at a lot of the claims made in the Creed to go out and continue his work.
I picture the risen Christ appearing before his mother in her house full of mourners just as he appears to these disciples in their locked room. Because if he did, he would hear her call him not Jesus which is the Greek form of his name. No, Mary would breathlessly cry out his true name of “Yeshua,” which means “Salvation” in Aramaic.
It is always important for us to remember that everything we read in scripture is not just translation, but it is often a translation of a translation of a translation in the New Testament especially, going backwards from English to Biblical Greek to possibly Hebrew and then Aramaic, the milk-language of Jesus and his followers.
I picture this scene as one of the regrettably omitted stories from John’s gospel because the word “salvation” is another word that has gotten twisted about in our modern religious language just a bit. Too many people hear that word and think that all it means is about what happens after we die, and two divergent tracks then appear, so that “salvation” becomes a kind of fork in the road.
The first track is that people are told salvation is about the afterlife. And they think of all those images of hellfire and brimstone and eternal torture for those condemned, images that even show up on Saturday Night Live--and what is more secular than Saturday Night Live, when you think about it? They think of those images, and even behind the cartoonish quality in popular culture they get scared, and then they turn this whole “following Jesus” thing from a relationship to a transaction, as we Americans are particularly prone to do.
We love transactions for the neatness of them. We especially love to get a “bargain.” And so, soon, salvation becomes a bargain with God, to see what the lowest price to get ourselves some of this “heaven” thing:
“Do I just have to say I believe in you, God?”
“Do I just have to get baptized?”
“How about if I confine you to Sunday and go to church? Is that enough?”
And we make these bargains in our relationships all the time, hoping to insulate ourselves from paying a cost too high to keep ourselves comfortable and keep our lives with its familiar shapes and concerns—most of which have nothing to do with God, or with how we spend our lives on Earth each and every day, clinging to our old ways and often our old hurt and old scars. And so for Christians, then Jesus becomes a kind of agent, like a real estate agent or insurance agent, who helps us make the deal with God. If we believe in him, he helps us out. Quid pro quo. This for that. Neat.
The other track we get when some of us hear the word “salvation” is for those of us who have a hard time imagining for certain what happens to us after we die, and so we lose interest. This is probably a broader swath of the population than we might think, especially for those of us brought up under some kind of Christian faith that used transactional theology because transactions are the bedrock of too many of our relationships. But there are people who do not spend their time wondering about what happens after we die. That’s off in the future, and they’re just surviving day to day. Or they’re trying to make THIS world a better place, not just for themselves but for everybody, and the concept of “salvation” as it is packaged just doesn’t seem to apply.
But let me suggest that the story we hear today is all about salvation—but salvation as Jesus insistently framed it. Throughout Jesus’s ministry and teaching, salvation isn’t about heaven or hell when we die, but about the way God can and DOES work in our lives.
The other track we get when some of us hear the word “salvation” is for those of us who have a hard time imagining for certain what happens to us after we die, and so we lose interest. This is probably a broader swath of the population than we might think, especially for those of us brought up under some kind of Christian faith that used transactional theology because transactions are the bedrock of too many of our relationships. But there are people who do not spend their time wondering about what happens after we die. That’s off in the future, and they’re just surviving day to day. Or they’re trying to make THIS world a better place, not just for themselves but for everybody, and the concept of “salvation” as it is packaged just doesn’t seem to apply.
But let me suggest that the story we hear today is all about salvation—but salvation as Jesus insistently framed it. Throughout Jesus’s ministry and teaching, salvation isn’t about heaven or hell when we die, but about the way God can and DOES work in our lives.
Salvation is about trusting in that power as a LIVED reality. It’s about leaning into that power right now, in the present moment and every moment of our lives, to let love heal us, broaden our perspective from the miserly and the afraid to the brave and empowered.
The salvation that Jesus embodies, from his very name outward, is
about healing,
about reconciliation,
and about awakening the divine spark within each and every one of us.
Salvation begins now, so that we too can carry on Jesus’s ministry of reconciliation as the very best, most joyful way to live our lives and to help heal the broken places in both ourselves and in the world around us.
And so, as our gospel still hasn’t moved us from the evening of Resurrection Day, and as we are just starting out in the early days yet of the Easter season that lasts 50 days, I hope we can think of Jesus tenderly caring for all of those he loves, including with his mother among his disciples. I hope we can proclaim his as seeking to heal the wounds all of us carry so that we can feel empowered to themselves engage in healing, in reconciling, in true salvation which builds bridges rather than divides. To love others enough to ever widen the circle of those who have been saved from emptiness, despair, fear, and hopelessness—all the things those disciples are feeling in that room when Jesus suddenly appears in the midst of them and breathes his peace all over them again. Because THAT is a true salvation.
Because here’s another thing about Easter: Easter can be extremely hard for some people. Easter talks about things that are unbelievable, for one. But going deeper, even if most of what you see is goofy Easter bunnies and debates over whether Peeps are actually “food” or instead sugary Styrofoam, good only for creating diaramas, “church” is often at the center of Easter. Easter is notoriously one of two times every year when a lot of people who never go to church during the year drag out a pastel colored shirt and some slacks and a sport jacket, or a gauzy dress and if you are a lady from certain parts of the country a jaunty hat, and go to church. Some can’t bring themselves to do even this. A lot of people, in fact.
And so, as our gospel still hasn’t moved us from the evening of Resurrection Day, and as we are just starting out in the early days yet of the Easter season that lasts 50 days, I hope we can think of Jesus tenderly caring for all of those he loves, including with his mother among his disciples. I hope we can proclaim his as seeking to heal the wounds all of us carry so that we can feel empowered to themselves engage in healing, in reconciling, in true salvation which builds bridges rather than divides. To love others enough to ever widen the circle of those who have been saved from emptiness, despair, fear, and hopelessness—all the things those disciples are feeling in that room when Jesus suddenly appears in the midst of them and breathes his peace all over them again. Because THAT is a true salvation.
Because here’s another thing about Easter: Easter can be extremely hard for some people. Easter talks about things that are unbelievable, for one. But going deeper, even if most of what you see is goofy Easter bunnies and debates over whether Peeps are actually “food” or instead sugary Styrofoam, good only for creating diaramas, “church” is often at the center of Easter. Easter is notoriously one of two times every year when a lot of people who never go to church during the year drag out a pastel colored shirt and some slacks and a sport jacket, or a gauzy dress and if you are a lady from certain parts of the country a jaunty hat, and go to church. Some can’t bring themselves to do even this. A lot of people, in fact.
And for too many of these people, there is a reason why feeling that pull to cross the threshhold of a church is painful. The Big C, institutional Church, fallible and made up of fallible human beings as it is, has hurt them. It has told them that Christianity is about judging others and demanding sacrifices of their essential natures that those same judgmental ones would never even consider in their own lives. It’s a Christianity that looks for scapegoats while completely missing the irony that Jesus himself served exactly as that in the politics between the common people and the power of empire.
It’s a false Christianity, that tries to justify hating certain people into repentance-- like that ever works! It's behind a bill brought up in Arkansas recently that sought to give medical professionals who identify as Christian the right to refuse to treat people if they suspect they are LGBTQ—all in the name of the same Jesus we see today inviting people to see his wounds as signs of his realness. Or there are people who have been shamed for questioning, for doubting, like that’s a bad thing—just like poor old Thomas there, who gets that damning “Doubting” adjective permanently glued in front of his name forever, even though what he experiences is SO common and relatable.
Going back to church for those who have been hurt and marginalized by this kind of Christianity is more like returning to the scene of a crime than getting your spiritual batteries recharged. And those of us who identify ourselves as actively Christian thus are presented with our first chance to ourselves take part in the salvation of Jesus which bring healing and reconciliation. And we don’t even have to do it by glomming onto every stranger that walks through our doors, especially at Easter.
We don’t have to do this work by starting at trying to scare people into belief-- and by that I mean a bargain with God so that they can avoid “hell.” We do this by revealing salvation as a life moving toward healing even for those who feel like they have no hope of being loved for who they are. We can start by actually SEEING everyone the same way that Jesus did—as beloved. Beloved as we all are and not excluded due to some checklist created by fearful people. Beloved even as we all are, even as we find our ways out of various wildernesses like addiction, racism, homophobia, taking advantage of others, or misogyny.
Yeshua, whose name means Salvation, is here, right now, showing us his scars and commissioning his followers to go out and offer healing and reconciliation to those they encounter by proclaiming God’s power in the lives of everyone.
As disciples, we are called to spread the good news of healing and restoring hope--not by condemning people for their alleged sinfulness, but by embracing them just as God embraces us through our best times and our worst times. And here is where the layers of human translation have to be peeled back again, because many scholars point out that the earliest text specifically reads, “Of whomever you forgive the sins, they (the sins) are forgiven to them; whomever you hold fast [or embrace], they are held fast.’ We engage in the work of salvation when we hold fast to the people we meet, scars and all, and share God’s love that we have been given with them. That means we don’t do Jesus’s work by telling people they are irretrievably broken and rejected, as too many people hear in the mouths of preachers and spokespersons for the institutional Church.
Salvation is Jesus’s message and ministry, his “good news” that never gets stale. But it is not a transaction for us as individuals, but a transformation for us into a community of faith and generous, loving engagement with all of those around us.
We can with honesty and hope share our scars with those around us too—share our scars, and the healing grace we have received from God in our own specific lives. It begins by sharing the story too many have missed. It begins by unlocking the locked doors we hide behind, and wearing our scars as a sign of our healing, of our solidarity with Jesus in his work of transformation and hope. Known by our scars, proclaiming life beyond them-- that's the missing story so many need.
Amen.
Salvation is Jesus’s message and ministry, his “good news” that never gets stale. But it is not a transaction for us as individuals, but a transformation for us into a community of faith and generous, loving engagement with all of those around us.
We can with honesty and hope share our scars with those around us too—share our scars, and the healing grace we have received from God in our own specific lives. It begins by sharing the story too many have missed. It begins by unlocking the locked doors we hide behind, and wearing our scars as a sign of our healing, of our solidarity with Jesus in his work of transformation and hope. Known by our scars, proclaiming life beyond them-- that's the missing story so many need.
Amen.
Preached at the 10:30 am online Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in time of pandemic, April 11, 2021.
Readings:
Attributions:
I am deeply indebted to The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor for her article, "Easter Preaching and the Lost Language of Salvation," from the Journal for Preachers, Easter 2002, pp. 18-25.
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