All We Need Is Love: Sermon for Easter 5B

In 1967, human technology created numerous marvels. One perpetual favorite was automobiles, which I have been thinking about as we prepare for our car show and barbecue festival after this service. Car and Driver magazine’s fourth annual readers’ poll that year was revealing: the Corvette Sting Ray was voted overall favorite car—no surprise there. The Ford Mustang 390 GT, which had only been produced since 1964 and a half, won for the third consecutive time in its sport sedan division- “sedan!” Ha ha ha! The Porsche 911S with six cylinders and 180 horses, won what one might call the “pocket rocket” category. The VW Beetle 1500 reigned supreme in the imported economy car category.(1)

And speaking of Beatles, the little band from Liverpool bearing a different spelling of that name were doing quite well for themselves.

The year of 1967 also had numerous challenges and crises. The Vietnam War was fully engulfing southeast Asia, and Martin Luther King began making speeches about how that war especially impacted the poor and oppressed both in Vietnam And its neighboring countries, but also the poor and working class in America whose sons and daughters provided most of the troops. The Arab-Israel conflict erupted into open hostilities again that year in the so-called “Six Day War.” The island nation of Cyprus was being fought over by Turkey and Greece. American cities erupted and to civil unrest over continued issues in America with racial segregation and oppression.

Also that year, a producer named Aubrey Singer with the British Broadcasting Corporation had an innovative idea. Now that geosynchronous satellites made it possible, the idea was promoted to create a live broadcast from nations across the globe promoting peace and positivity. The broadcast was to be entitled our world. In the end 14 different national broadcasters were involved in the production after member nations from the Soviet Union backed out in protest over the six day war. Nations were encouraged to offer their best and most hopeful content. Britain was lucky that it had those boys from Liverpool, and so the Beatles were commissioned to create, produce, and perform live a song for this broadcast. 

With just a few of their friends, including members of The Rolling Stones, Crosby Stills and Nash, and Small Faces, they produced a little ditty that could not be misinterpreted, according to the words of their manager Brian Epstein. It went like this:

“There's nothing you can do that can't be done;
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung;
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy!
Nothing you can make that can't be made;
No one you can save that can't be saved;
Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time;
It's easy!

All you need is love. All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.”(2)



Our readings today remind us that John the Beatle’s message overlaps heavily with John the Evangelist’s message. Both were trying to address the question of how we live our best life—our most authentic life. And our readings today remind us that they both arrived at the same conclusion: Love IS all you need. John the Beatle just added catchy music. But the message remains the same. Love is all we need. And all we need is love.

In both our epistle and our gospel from John the Evangelist, we see two words used repeatedly: “love,” and “abide.” “Abide” is an old word; in the Old English, it means to remain, to wait for, and to dwell. As the word developed over time, its meaning broadened, to mean to live with and remain in the service of someone. The repeated use of these two words reminds us that, in God, the way of life IS the way of love.

What does this mean for us? To put it plainly: As children of God, we are made to love, to abide in love, as present as each breath we take.

To “abide with,” as we see it here, is to open ourselves to trust in God’s love, fully, and without fear. It is to be able to depend upon God completely, as in the words of the old hymn, number 662 in our hymnal:

Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.(3)

Our epistle states it clearly: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” And we hear almost the same phrasing in John 15:4-10, much of which is covered in our gospel passage today:

Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

This is where we turn from our personal relationship with God, to our relationship with others. We aren’t meant to simply absorb God’s love for ourselves, but to reflect that love so that our lives are a testimony for the world Jesus came to save through love.

We are made to abide with God, and open ourselves so that God abides within us, but that love also changes our orientation from an inward direction to an outward direction. We are not meant to try to keep that love for ourselves, but to share the joy that it brings us with those around us. Through this sharing, God’s love becomes most visible to the world, especially to those who do not know God. Again and again, Jesus reminds us that love is the core of our mission in the world.

The full expression of the love we experience in God empowers us to fully participate as partners in the life of God. That’s what we mean when we live fully into the Eucharistic life we celebrate together, all of us together as ministers of Christ. Every time we gather around this altar, we are empowered to act as Christ’s body in the world. All for love.

And that love is not a passive thing, not just an emotion or an attitude. The love we are called to embody is rooted in action. Concrete, deliberate, self-giving action that is the foundation of the life that is fully human and fully faithful, which perhaps could also be pronounced “faith-filled.” Because it’s also important to remember that the love that draws us to be sustained by God also calls us to sustain each other. The Christian life is not a life lived for ourselves, but a life lived FOR God and FOR others. If we are to abide in God, we are made partners with God in the work of bringing God’s creative power and love alive for those who do not yet know it.

Our readings and our experience with God through Christ convince us of this: that sharing in the love of God is sharing in God’s very being. That means that what we do and how we love or do not love will be the most visible means for those who do not know God to see God in action.

As Christians, we ARE the branches of Jesus, the true vine. That’s a heady responsibility. We are made branches of the vine through the love that God has for us through Christ, who is fully human and fully God all at once. Jesus is the Incarnation of God in human form to try to show us the way in which we are called to go to get back to our true natures as children of the Most High.

How do we live a good life—an authentic life? By understanding that Jesus calls us to remake our lives so that we are focused outside ourselves, but that in conceding everything that we believe matters, we gain all that actually does matter. It starts with turning rank and privilege and honor and prerogative upside-down. It starts with embodying kindness when we could respond with disdain; listening when we could turn away; honoring the dignity and worth of those society casts aside. And it starts with not kidding ourselves that this is easy. We begin this journey of love by understanding that we can’t take the hand of Christ until we unclench the fists and the hearts that world sometimes scares us into making, and relax into the light and love of God, for our sakes, yes—but for the sake of the world as well.

The greatest way the world will come to know Christ as we who call ourselves Christians do is through our actions. Our actions, especially as Christians, as those who “wear” the name of Christ out into the world, is often the only testimony the world has as to who Jesus is.

This is the challenge facing us each day. What, exactly, DO our actions tell the outside world about who Jesus is, and how Jesus forms and shapes our lives?

Jesus shows us, again and again, that we understand who we truly are as children beloved of God by loving beyond ourselves. By loving each other, and thereby loving God. Love is the ultimate act of bravery and faith, because it requires so much of us.

And yet it requires so little of us, because God has given us God’s utmost first. God has made the first move for us, by holding nothing back. That’s made clear when we hear this: “God’s love is revealed among us in this way: God sent God’s only Son into the world so that we might live and know God through Jesus.”

It is God’s love first that draws from us the response of love. Just as the song says, “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.” In calling us to abide in love, God doesn’t ask us to do anything we aren’t made to be capable of.

Jesus embodied love in action. We are therefore called and charged with the holiest of charges, to do exactly the same, in our speaking, acting, and the way that we see each other. God’s abundant love and mercy, that we taste and see and share here around this altar, does not exist merely to comfort us, but to fill us to overflowing so that we then show the world in our own actions a light so lovely that those around us want with all their hearts to know that light too.

God is love. God abides within us. And that love- for God and for those we encounter—is all we need to help heal the world.

Amen.

Readings:

Acts 8:26-40

Psalm 22:24-30

1 John 4:7-21

John 15:1-8

Preached at the 505 on April 27 and the 10:30 principal Holy Eucharist service on April 28, 2024, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Citations:

1) "1967 Readers' Choice Winners: The Fourth Annual Car and Driver Readers' Choice Winners!" May, 1967, at Car and Driver magazine, https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15143564/1967-readers-choice-winners/

2) "All You Need is Love," written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, performed for the first time on the Our World broadcast, June 25, 1967.

3) "Abide With Me," lyrics by Henry Francis Lyle.

Image is the cover for the single of "All You Need is Love, which ended up being included on the Yellow Submarine album.

The official video for "All You Need is Love:"

One Love, One Flock, One Shepherd: Sermon for Easter 4B (Shepherd Sunday)

The Good Shepherd, watercolor, Yu Jiade, Shanghai

Every year, on the fourth Sunday in Eastertide, we hear special readings centered on the images of sheep and shepherds, and this year is no different. And although shepherd are mentioned 118 times between the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation, we get the strongest passages of them repeatedly. I mean if I were to ask you where you remember shepherds being mentioned in scripture, I imagine many of you, or even people who do not attend church regularly, who probably mention the opening line of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

Now I also am pretty certain, that, beside Miss Sherrie, and my spouse who grew up in the midst of the Navajo Reservation, not many of us would have much experience with actual sheep or lambs outside to the petting area in the children’s section of the St. Louis Zoo. And if you have ever been there, you might also have noticed that while sheep and lambs are certainly cute and fluffy, so adorable when they are being bottle or hand-fed, they produce some incredibly pungent poo even in an outdoor area. So see? They really are just like us humans. We can be cute, but we also can be mighty stinky and prone to head butting when things make us feel anxious.

The metaphor of a shepherd is also meant to remind us of two central claims echoed in our readings today especially our gospel and epistle, intimately related as they are: That at the heart of the life of faith is living in community, held together by the love of God and the love for each other. Herders of animals all know—and usually so do the herdees, themselves, that if the flock scatters, those on the fringes are easier to be picked off by predators, either animal or human.

Jesus called his friends and followers into community that was meant to be a tight as any well-tended flock. But the ingredient that was meant to hold the flock together was not fear or animal instinct. No, it was something infinitely better: love. But not the words. Love in action, as our readings, especially our epistle, emphasizes.

The Good Shepherd, mandala, Jhoti Sahi, India

It’s hard to be the kind of sheep that puts the needs of the flock first. It goes against our natures, sometimes, and our instinct to only think about now rather than the future. But Psalm 24 makes some specific comforting promises and uses images of comfort and encouragement.

The first 4 verses of Psalm 23 has the psalmist, and therefore us, imaginatively, on a journey with God; verses 5 and 6 depict God as a host at a wonderful feast of blessing. The image is of a dedicated, loving shepherd leading his flock into a fertile, verdant valley where the flocks can rest and have all needs fulfilled in peace and security; even if wolves lurk in the shadows, the sheep know that the strong hand of their shepherd will drive away any danger. Note that the right pathways have taken the sheep and their shepherd through the “valley of the shadow of death.” We are not promised that we will not face trials, even as we seek to follow God. The right pathways God wants us to follow may lead us into danger, even crisis, yet if we remember that God is with us and is OURS as well as we being God’s we cannot be afraid. Verse six uses covenantal language to emphasize that God’s promises are trustworthy and the foundation of all blessing.

Expanding upon this, our epistle continues imaginatively to pick up the theme.

Here’s the heart of it for me: “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” We cannot do everything. But we can do something. Every day.

Some scholars believe that the first letter of John is an expansion upon the messages in the gospel of John. Ironically, 1 John 3:16 expands upon John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him would have everlasting life.”

Yet what does it mean to have everlasting life? Is this promising us that if we believe in a personal Jesus, and avow our belief, we will get to live in heaven forever? Many, many people believe exactly that. Yet to me, that makes faith a transaction: I do X and God saves me from eternal torment. How can you really “have something if you only have it after you die? Yet that is what millions of people believe. But when you study scripture broadly, which a lectionary forces us to do, you begin to see a broader message emerge: having the eternal life is a present tense statement.

Yet what if it is our actions right now that bring us either eternal bliss and peace or eternal torment? What if we realized that every time we treat with contempt, or callousness, we are wrapping around ourselves what songwriter Aimee Mann reimagined via Charles Dickens as “Jacob Marley’s Chain?”

Well, today a friend told me this sorry tale
As he stood there trembling and turning pale
He said each day's harder to get on the scale
Sort of like Jacob Marley's chain

But it's not like life is such a vale of tears
It's just full of thoughts that act as souvenirs
For those tiny blunders made in yesteryear
That comprise Jacob Marley's chain

Well, I had a little metaphor to state my case
It encompassed the condition of the human race
But to my dismay, it left without a trace
Except for the sound of Jacob Marley's chain

Now there is no story left to tell
So I think I'd rather just go on to hell
Where there's a snowball's chance that the personnel
Might help to carry Jacob Marley's chain (1)

Ms. Mann makes a more subtle point than in Dickens’s fable: the chains we ourselves forge from our actions (for even refusing to act is a choice) are carried with us in this moment, right now, often as regret and guilt. Mann’s 4th verse regarding to preferring hell speaks to another difficulty of our modern times—that people who think themselves righteous often have little sympathy for those whose consciences are burdened by things they have done. It is often the other acknowledged “sinners” who have the most sympathy for their fellow sinners, and may help to carry those chains of regret and guilt, forged by being … human.

But both Dickens and Mann agree that we can unmake them, too. Rather than move from the negative, our scripture reading in this epistle points us to a brighter truth, rooted and grounded in the love that we have to declare our allegiance to if we are disciples of Christ: God’s love abides when we choose to let go of our chains of anxiety, and instead take care of each other, without wondering about whether they are “deserving”--or not. The first letter to John reminds us that God so loved the world, even when it did not and sometimes does not deserve it—and so we are drawn to behave in the same way if we allow God’s love to overflow within us, if we allow our cup to run over. We are reminded that our shepherd will supply our need—and that our shepherd expects us to help with that mission of abundance, total trust, and compassion, for we are, as St. Teresa of Avila reminded us, God’s hands and feet in the world. Love in action.

Some people have a hard time saying the word “love”—and some people cheapen it by throwing it around as a descriptor for anything pleasing: “ I love this hairdryer! I love this fabric softener! I love these shoes! I love this toilet paper!” My dad had a hard time saying “I love you” in words—at least where he though anyone might hear it. But he showed me he loved me in a million ways.

Or the time there was an ice storm while I was in high school, and at dismissal everyone’s cars were coated in an inch of solid ice—everyone’s cars except mine—as he came before he went to work on the afternoon shift and spent thirty minutes de-icing and opening my car, turning on the engine so it could warm up as he scraped the ice off of every window and door in case I needed to take some friends home who didn’t have daddies that could do that.

In the end, of course, love is about selflessness, not about self-gratification. It IS about being willing to lay down your preferences and comforts in the name of making the beloved’s happiness a guiding goal of your life and relationship. Consider in your own life which is better—to hear someone say “I love you” when their actions show nothing but self- involvement, or to not hear the words but to know that someone will act to care for you, to feed you, to shelter you, and to help you bear your burdens.

That’s the kind of love Jesus in his earthly existence exemplified for us—and often for people who were considered less-than, or undeserving.

Let’s face it, we are not sure if shepherds actually sat around telling their sheep they love them. But they certainly cared for them, watched over them, made sure they were sheltered, made sure they had green pastures and still waters, and stood between them and the wolves and hyenas and thieves who often were just watching for the flock to scatter so they could scoop off the stragglers or the weak.

The command that we love one another in action and deed, not only in words, is not a contract, an agreement of tit for tat, that gains us everlasting life in exchange for mouthing a few platitudes while leaving our precious hearts and lives undisturbed. God’s love as revealed in Christ cannot be hoarded for our own benefit, just as manna cannot be stored, but each day we, like the Israelites in the wilderness, rise and trust that God has prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemies, even when those enemies are us.

Lovelessness and loneliness are overwhelming too many people in our world right now. Yet just before our reading, at verse 11. John makes a concise statement: “This is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. “

What does a modern application of John urging us to love one another in deed and action lead us toward? Perhaps to a reconsideration of the violence, contempt, and hatred that plagues human life all around the world and in our own backyards. In the verse immediately preceding our reading today, John claims that hatred is basically equivalent to murder.

The cornerstone for the Christian life is Christ, and Christ is rooted in love and mercy. Therefore, if we are truly aligned with Christ, we too must align our lives in truth and action to that imitate that same love and mercy in our own lives. As beloved sheep, and ourselves called to be loving shepherds, enacating love in the world. For God’s sake, and our own. So that we will proclaim one love, one flock, one shepherd.

Readings:

Acts 4:5-12

Psalm 23

1 John 3:16-24

John 10:11-18

Preached at the 505 on April 20 and the main service of holy Eucharist on April 21 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Citations:

1) "Jacob Marley's Chain," written by Aimee Mann, from her album Whatever, 1993.

The Love That Upholds Us: Sermon for Easter 3B

See what love the Father has for us, that we should be called children of God…. What an amazing statement we hear in our epistle.

Dame Julian of Norwich expands upon this theme in her book, Revelations of Divine Love, the first book written in English by a female author. She writes:

The love of God most High for our soul
is so wonderful that it surpasses all
knowledge. No created being can fully know
the greatness, the sweetness, the
tenderness, of the love that our Maker has
for us. By God’s Grace and help therefore let
us in spirit stand in awe and gaze, eternally
marvelling at the supreme, surpassing,
single-minded, incalculable love that God,
Who is all goodness, has for us.

Meditations on God’s mercy, and God’s intense love for us both as part of creation and as individuals are particularly important, as our Psalm today also reminds us, when we have been cast into shock or turmoil by events that swirl around us.

This Sunday’s readings have contained many words of comfort and strength for me in the last few days. We have had two of our beloved parishioners pass into glory this week, and my mother, my sister and I have been dealing with the sudden death of my younger brother. Meditating upon verses such as Psalm 4:6-8 speaks directly to the trouble and doubts that plague us when we experience trauma and loss. I commend these words to you for comfort and assurance in times such as these:

Many are saying, "Oh, that we might see better times!"
Lift up the light of your countenance upon us, O LORD.
You have put gladness in my heart,
more than when grain and wine and oil increase.
I lie down in peace; at once I fall asleep;
for only you, LORD, make me dwell in safety.

All four of our readings this weekend speak to a lack of belief in response to being involved in pain and loss. Our gospel passage, from Luke 24, comes from the final chapter in the gospel of Luke, and, lain alongside the gospel from John we heard last week, give us Luke’s version of the events we heard last week: Jesus suddenly appears to all the apostles gathered together.

Jesus’s first words, just as we saw in the gospel of John, are to bless his disciples and friends with peace (v. 36). As in the portion of John’s gospel that we heard last week, this is in response to his friends’ fear, their swirling emotions, and their doubt that erupts as a result. Their response is natural and human—there is a reason why “I can’t believe it” is often our first response to shocking news like the loss of loved ones.

Jesus KNOWS that the apostles, having been through the trauma of his horrific, shameful death, can’t dare to believe that he is alive and risen. That is why Jesus then commands those present to look at him- to truly see him, and to know that he is real. Of course, their first tendency is to think that they are looking at a ghost. Yet Jesus eating and drinking is meant to underscore that this is a living, breathing Christ that they encounter—ghosts have no need for food or drink.

Luke’s recounting of Jesus’s actions directly addresses the doubts of those had insisted that Jesus was never fully human—disagreements of which have continued in Christianity to this present day. Passages such as these underscore the humanity of Jesus, risen and fully alive, hungry and thirsty, bearing scars in his crucified, yet living body-- signs of his bodily survival and triumph over the grave.

We see this argument continuing today. Some quadrants of Christianity play down Jesus’s humanity in favor of his divinity. This sadly all too often leads to a belief that one cannot imitate Jesus in our earthly lives, since he really was God masquerading as a human. No need to try to reconcile or love your enemies, much less forgive them even from the cross. Saying you believe in Jesus then becomes nothing about living a Resurrection shaped life, but a transaction where saying a magic formula will put you in line for heaven after you die—a heaven that is made all the more desirable by anticipating all the people you don’t approve of roasting in hell.

Other quadrants of Christianity downplay Jesus’s divinity in search of the “historical Jesus”—the first century Jewish peasant who formed a little band of followers to challenge the Roman Empire. This approach, sadly can lead to Jesus merely being a sage—or the subject of books by Dan Brown that people forget are FICTION. This Jesus never arose, never ascended. This belief is the product of Enlightenment thinking, that holds that there are no such things as miracles, and wonder is a mere product of naivete.

The Episcopal way welcomes those from both these tendencies. However, our theology creates a generous embrace of paradox—We fully embrace a High Christology that emphasizes Jesus’s divinity, AND a “Low Christology” that emphasizes Jesus’s humanity. At the same time. Without our heads exploding. We do that by embracing the wonders of mystery as not a threat or sign of ignorance, but as a sign of reverence toward the God whose self-revelation to mere mortals throughout history is always generous and imaginatively rich, but is a God who nonetheless is known to us only in part. We humbly acknowledge that what we know of God can never mean that we know all of God, or can limit God according to the limits of our imaginations.

But experiences like losing loved ones, friend or family, especially during Eastertide, call us to consider anew the wonder of Christ’s Resurrection. Jesus’s bodily resurrection has important implications for all of us experiencing loss. For if Jesus had a bodily resurrection, then we can anticipate the same thing for ourselves. If, as some claimed, Jesus was only a spirit in the shape of a human body, then Jesus’s ability to understand the human condition and bring it into the experience of the divine would be greatly limited.

No, Jesus being both fully human and fully divine is a necessary precondition for our salvation throughout Christian theology to today. This is why you are encouraged to cross yourself at the words of the Creeds as we affirm our faith “in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting.”

The Resurrected Christ, we affirm, “ascended into heaven,” bringing with him his scars, the suffering he overcame his experiences of human existence—hunger, cold, the love of friends and family, marveling at the beauty of the grasses and the lilies of the fields, welcoming little children in their purity—and in doing so, he merged all those experiences into the reality of the Holy Trinity, who dances in a circle of love, and through Jesus invites all of us in, as well. This knowledge is particularly comforting to me, as my brother was taken from us all too young due to the power and sway of the disease of addiction, working its evils within him for the last 35 years.

Seeing the doubt of Jesus’s disciples and friends, and hearing Jesus’s words to be at peace and believing in his being with us in life as well as death helps us as we move from shock toward acceptance and faith in the face of death that, in the words of the preface for the Eucharist at a Burial service:

For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended…

That knowledge, and assurance, brings peace, for the disciples then and us as disciples now, indeed. Even as the resurrection of spring bursts forth all around us, we pray for that flourishing of new life to take root within our hearts and our souls, so that we can truly see and put our faith and hope in “seeing what love God has for us, that we should be called children of God…”.

Fastening onto that promise, the promise that envelops our lost loved ones, even now in the embrace of a God who NEVER gives up on us, who tells us we can’t earn or bargain away into eternal life but accept it as a wondrous gift freely given. In doing so, we can LIVE Resurrection, right now. As an act of faith, and an act of being. For the love of the world.

Readings:

Acts 3:12-19

Psalm 4

1 John 3:1-7

Luke 24:36b-48

Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, on the weekend of April 13-14, 2024.

Seeing Signs and Scars- Sermon for Easter 2B, April 6-7 2024

I imagine many of us are eagerly anticipating the solar eclipse predicted for Monday.

An eclipse happening right now is particularly interesting timing, since just on Good Friday mere days ago, we heard that at the crucifixion of Jesus, there was not only an earthquake, but the sun darkened in the sky. This has led some people to speculate that there was a solar eclipse on the day Jesus died on the cross. But it was just speculation—until modern science has ridden in to provide insight.

Come to find out, in 2012, a group of German scientists looked at historical data of earthquakes as well as the Jewish calendar, and theorized that Jesus was crucified on April 3, 33 CE. However, the problem is that Passover occurs on a full moon, and solar eclipses require a new moon. But then NASA stepped in with a chart of 5000 years of eclipses and where they occurred—and found that a LUNAR eclipse occurred on—get this—April 3, 33 CE over the Holy Land.

Many people get really excited about eclipses. Even though one happens roughly every 18 months, WHERE they are visible shifts all over the globe. The last time we had a big eclipse over the US was in 2018, and we were just a couple of miles from totality. We pulled our son from school and took him to my favorite retreat place to make sure he could see it—and it was amazing. Some people would be satisfied with seeing the event on TV—but that’s not the same thing as experiencing it live and in person. Seeing is believing, as they say.

And that brings me to my yearly defense of poor ol’ apostle Thomas. Hearing about Jesus being risen was not enough for him—just like it’s hard for us to believe it too. Seeing is, after all, believing.

Paul Simon, in a song off his Graceland album of 1986, sagely sang, “Faith is an island in the setting sun; but proof, yes--proof is the bottom line for everyone.” Thomas wants proof. Like we all do.

The author of John knows this, and this story is meant to encourage Christians from John’s time until now: those who have not seen, but take the leap of faith anyway. We live in a time two millennia after these events. Of course we have doubts- we have even more reason than Thomas. We are caught just as much as those disciples were in the thrall of empire where the powerful never have enough power, the wealthy never have enough wealth, the influencers never have enough influence. We are as much held in thrall by emotional as well as economic scarcity is those who lived in Jesus’s time were. If Thomas—and all the other disciples at that time-- can doubt and emerge the stronger for it, so of course can we. Further, given our distance in time and culturally from the events depicted in the gospels, it is only through engaging our faith through questions and doubts that we can seriously engage our faith. Just as a muscle only gets stronger, when stressed, so too our faith.

Sadly for Thomas, this is the only story in which he plays a starring role. And so he gets that “doubting label” attached to his name like it was superglued there and very unfairly, too.

However, there’s a lot going on here besides Thomas demanding proof, and that gets obscured when we fasten just on Thomas and his very understandable reaction. So let’s circle back to the beginning.

While we have loudly proclaiming alleluias all week, our gospel today takes up the story on Easter Sunday evening. The first emotion that is noted right from the very start is “fear--” which is right where the end of Mark’s gospel leaves us at the end of that gospel, as we can hear in the alternative gospel for Easter Sunday in the B years of the lectionary. The doors are locked because the disciples are still afraid of the religious authorities, which John’s gospel troublingly refers to as “the Jews,” even though practically everyone in the story is a Jew as well. It is despite those locked doors that Jesus appears before his fearful followers. In response to this fear, Jesus gives them his peace. Ever since John 14:27, Jesus’s response to fear among his disciples has been to wish them peace. He also links peace to courage at 16:33, as well.

At v. 20, Jesus then shows the disciples his wounds—or more specifically, I believe, his scars. If they were still wounds, Jesus might still be a ghost. For his wounds to become scars indicates that his living body has engaged in the process of healing. This is another important point that gets overlooked by focusing on the “Doubting Thomas” story. Jesus’s risen body will always be the body of the Crucified One. His wounds and scars do not disappear—but now they are a part of who he is, and their presence helps prove his identity. And knowing that those wounds are there are important to us. We all carry the wounds and scars of our lives with us.

Upon seeing Jesus’s wounds, the disciples go from fear to joy, because now they know that this is truly Jesus. It could be that his face is different, but the wounds convince them, and they are filled with joy to know that Jesus has risen. At v. 21-23, Jesus again wishes them peace, and then in the same breath (word choice deliberate) commissions them with the same mission Jesus himself had from God: to go and forgive sins and engage in the reconciliation of the world to God. In an action reminiscent of the creation of Adam in Genesis 2, he breathes upon them the Holy Spirit. Remember, the fact that he has breath also proves that he is truly alive, not a ghost or a spectre or a spirit.

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, unlike all the apostles except for Judas. 

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 defining salvation as a life moving toward healing even for those who feel like they have lost every shred of hope they ever had. We can start by actually SEEING these people 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 wat 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. Not a transaction, but a transformation.

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. That’s a sign we can all see, and a sign that heals the scars we carry all our lives.

Readings:

Acts 4:32-35

Psalm 133

1 John 1:1-2:2

John 20:19-31

Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church on the weekend of April 6-7, 2024.