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.

Wounds, Doubts, and Resurrection: Sermon for Easter 2C

Welcome to our yearly visit with Honest Thomas—the disciple who asks what everyone else is wondering.

You might notice that I do not refer to him as “Doubting Thomas.”

That’s because it is pretty unfair to stick that label on him and not on the other ten remaining apostles. They ALL doubted. And who can blame them? That’s a completely human reaction to have.

Throughout the centuries there has been a hatchet job done on the whole concept of “doubt.” I have heard church people refer to doubt as “the lack of faith.” If you have doubts, they piously intone, you have “lost your faith.”

Not so.

The opposite of faith is not doubt. Doubt demonstrates that you are engaging with the questions before you, seriously. The opposite of faith is disengagement—in not wrestling with the questions, and their impact on our lives, at all. The opposite of faith is not caring, giving up. The life of faith is an active life—it doesn’t take place between your ears, but under your ribs. Faith is not an intellectual proposition to be proved or disproved based on evidence, but a conversion of heart and spirit toward a life seeking after the holy, the good, and the compassionate.

Instead, what I am drawn to thinking about this year as we hear this gospel is the idea of Jesus’s wounds. Not in a creepy way. But as signs of Christ’s solidarity with us.

Too often, wounds and scars are seen as imperfections, something to hide or be ashamed of. They are sometimes used to identify you—and even sometimes make you simply a collection of your wounds and scars, as if that is all there is to any person.

Have you ever noticed that when the authorities are looking for a missing person, they include information about their noticeable scars? Our scars are like our fingerprints—each unique.

Harrison Ford’s got a famous scar on his chin from a car accident, and he gave Sean Bean a scar on his forehead when filming Patriot Games. Harry Potter has his famous lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead, and Professor Dumbledore claims to have a scar on his knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground. The evil prince who usurps the throne in The Lion King is actually named Scar. Our beautiful Earth even bears wounds and scars, many inflicted by human activity. As we celebrated Earth Day this last week, I hope that many of us thought of those wounds, and what we could do, each of us, to bring them to healing and recovery.

I thought of the painting by Caravaggio of Jesus inviting what the artist called an “incredulous” Thomas to actually touch those wounds (see the cover image above). Heck, Jesus doesn’t just invite—he takes Thomas’s wrist and drawn him toward his side. Jesus shows Thomas his scars to help prove it’s really him when Thomas, like the rest of the apostles, has a hard time believing that Jesus has been resurrected from the dead. Jesus’s wounds tell the story of love triumphing over death and evil and cruelty.

Our wounds and our scars also each tell a story. When I look at the scars on my body, I remember how I got each of them. There’s a long straight scar on my left leg where it meets my foot—I got that when I was 18, sitting cross-legged on the floor trying to open a hard plastic package with a new doorknob in it. I broke every rule about knife safety I had been taught and turned the blade toward me as I tried to cut open the clamshell packaging. I didn’t feel so good about it either—or the fact that my dad actually almost passed out when he saw the minimal amount of blood as I asked him to take me to the ER. That scar also memorializes the day I learned my dad was afraid of the sight of blood—one of his wounds I could not see.

Then there are scars that are invisible—internal, emotional scars. The ones we bear from heartbreak, or trauma, or abuse, or neglect—and the ones we frequently overlook in others in our rush to judge them. Those scars also tell a story of survival and resilience. Many of us have some new ones after the last few years.

And these internal scars, once we seek help and healing for them, once we accept that they are part of what makes us who we are but not the totality of who we are, are also an opportunity for us to develop empathy and choose a different path, so that we do not, in turn, inflict new scars like ours on others. Thanks to the love of Jesus in the tender hearts of others who have loved me and ministered to me, those kind of scars in my life I have eventually learned to treasure as precious reminders that I have choice, and agency, to break the cycles of pain and suffering that caused others to wound me and scar me. They remind me that I have survived, and that I am more than just my wounds and my scars. They remind me that there is always hope for healing.

Some people are ashamed of their wounds and scars. Our society puts too much emphasis on the idea of perfection being related to looking like you’ve never experienced the touch of pain or aging or just plain old living. That’s not healthy. But scars can also be noble. They are markers of endurance. We can also look at scars as signs of our survival and healing. They are signs of resilience.

As I preached last Sunday on Easter Day, we are being called to live a resurrected life. But even in that resurrected life, we too still bear the wounds and scars of our lives. Jesus’s scars are reminders to all of us that in undergoing death of a cross, Jesus takes the human experience of pain, suffering, and death into the very essence of the Triune God. God truly understands our pains and our traumas—including those we have undergone unjustly, just as Jesus did. Jesus’s scars are reminders of his full solidarity with us as human beings. That healing and resurrection are always possible in our lives, and a promise that our scars may mark us, but they don’t have to shape us.

Jesus showed his own scars to his friends 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. And that includes acknowledging the wounds and scars and suffering around us, and acting in the name of love to ameliorate them.

That’s part of what “salvation” and “redemption” mean—two words that get thrown around in Christian circles without nearly enough examination. Being saved and been redeemed by Jesus is NOT about what happens after death. It is about what happens now: the grace we receive, the healing we receive, and our obligation and joy to participate in giving that to others.

Jesus, whose name means Salvation, is here, right now, showing us his scars rather than chastising any of us for our questions and our doubts. He shows us the power of resurrection is absolutely reconciling and transformational—that’s the whole point. We can’t wipe away our pasts. But we can move beyond our wounds and welcome the healing balm of God’s love to take us from being a wounded victim to a joyful victor. In showing us his wounds, he invites us as his followers to go out and offer healing and reconciliation to those they encounter by proclaiming God’s power in the lives of everyone.

I have often wondered if Jesus didn’t wince a bit when Thomas touched those wounds—another image to which we all can relate. Jesus demonstrates that this—wounds and all—is his body. This is my Body, broken for you….” we intone at the Eucharist, and often without considering the impact of that remembrance, that statement. Jesus opens himself to us, bodily and spiritually around this altar every time we gather here.

We who have known woundedness are called to recognize God’s love in the wounds of Jesus. Top recognize that, and work to heal the wounds we encounter in the world today, since we are commissioned to action as the Body of Christ.

We can still see the wounds of Jesus all around us, as Pope Francis once remarked, on the bodies of those around us.

“How can I find the wounds of Jesus today? I cannot see them as Thomas saw them. I find them in doing works of mercy, in giving to the body — to the body and to the soul, but I stress the body — of your injured brethren, for they are hungry, thirsty, naked, humiliated, slaves, in prison, in hospital. These are the wounds of Jesus in our day.

"We must touch the wounds of Jesus, caress them. We must heal the wounds of Jesus with tenderness. We must literally kiss the wounds of Jesus…What Jesus asks us to do with our works of mercy is what Thomas asked: to enter his wounds.”

What does all of this mean for us, and our own struggles with faith, and our doubts? Thomas was simply trying to understand the meaning of those events of the last three days—remember that this story takes place on the evening of Easter Day and then seven days later. It’s all still fresh.

I wonder if that was indeed why Thomas needed to see those wounds—wounds that shocked and appalled Thomas even as they confirmed it was indeed his beloved teacher and not a ghost standing before him.

Just like Thomas, 2000 years later we wonder: What did it all mean? How could Jesus die on a cross, and why? What did that death mean—and certainly what did resurrection mean for Jesus’s closest friends and followers? Jesus is reappearing before his friends to remind them that they now carry on his healing, reconciling mission.

We are just like Thomas. But if we ask to see those wounds in the world, we, as the Body of Christ, also commit ourselves to working to bring healing, restoration, and justice to the places where those wounds exist—even if they are hard to see.

Jesus’s wounds are the signs of the power of God, not God’s weakness. They are the signs that Jesus has broken open the ways of death and destruction that governed the world. Jesus’s wounds remind us that our own wounds testify to the possibility and power of resurrection in our own lives through God’s steadfast lovingkindness, mercy, and grace. Jesus received those wounds for refusing to fight evil with evil, as he has been tempted to do from the time of his temptation in the wilderness by Satan at the beginning of his ministry, and as his followers had been tempted to do as the arresting authorities arrived to take Jesus into custody. Violence cannot overcome violence. Only love can. And love in action is the power of God in action-- and our own embodiment of Jesus as his Body, wounded and beautiful all at once.

Jesus invites us to bring our wounds and our doubts to him: they are honest signs of our paths to God, no matter how twisty or difficult. Jesus is our living breathing, wounded Savior who has overcome the worst humans and empires. Jesus invites us into living God’s dream for us and for all creation: a restored life, a resurrected life. Alleluia!

Preached at the 505 on April 23, and at the 8:00 and 10:30 am Eucharists at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

Acts 5:27-32

Psalm 150

Revelation 1:4-8

John 20:19-31

Citations:

Pope Francis, “Touching the Wounds of Jesus,” Morning Meditation in the Chapel of the Dominus Sanctae Marthae,  July 3, 2013. 

The Story We Missed: Sermon for Easter 2B

Every year we hear this gospel on the 2nd Sunday of Easter. Maybe it’s because, just like the apostles, we have a hard time believing in the stories of the resurrection, even though we shouted “alleluias” with joy just a week ago. Another possible reason for the choice of this gospel every year might be that this pericope spans the night of Easter Sunday itself

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. 

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: 

“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. 

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 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.

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.

Preached at the 10:30 am online Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in time of pandemic, April 11, 2021.

Readings:

Acts 4:32-35

Psalm 133

1 John 1:1-2:2

John 20:19-31

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.

Beyond the Benefit of a Doubt: Sermon for Easter 2A

This is the second Sunday of Easter, which means it’s “Thomas Sunday.” Last week, on Easter Day, we heard the story of Jesus’s appearance to Mary Magdalene, in the garden that contained the tomb. This week we hear about the second and the third of the five resurrection appearances at the end of John’s gospel. The second one we hear of today still takes place of Easter Sunday, and the third one a week later. 

Today we have heard again the story of how Jesus appeared to the disciples that Easter evening—all except Thomas. When Thomas hears about Jesus’s miraculous appearance, he doesn’t believe until he sees with his own eyes. One of the first details we hear is that the disciples are behind locked doors, for fear of their own people. I wonder if there’s anyone here who can relate to being shut away for fear right now? Being separated from friends and loved ones out of fear and anxiety of being struck down with no warning, perhaps wondering if we—and the whole world-- are being punished for something or wondering if we have been abandoned by God?

We live in a time right now when some, just like those disciples, question where God is in this pandemic, in this time of fear, anxiety, and mourning. Some even take that question to the level of disbelief. Yet the question might be better understood if we turn it around: it’s not that Jesus is missing, it’s that we do not recognize Jesus when we see him. Perhaps we discount him because we think he looks like a gardener. Perhaps we discount him because he appears to us in humble circumstances, or he looks different than we expect.

It is obvious in our gospel that Jesus has been changed by his Passion and Resurrection, and that even those who love and know him best have a very hard time recognizing him. Why should it be any better for us, 2,000 years later? Each and every story we hear after Jesus’s resurrection centers on the disciples’ confusion and a failure to recognize Jesus at first. Not just the story of Thomas. Doubt and confusion play a part in the story of every encounter with the risen Savior. There is no one thing that gets the disciples to recognize Jesus.

But perhaps we can hear this passage differently because of where we ourselves are, this year especially. Once again we are promised and reminded that, no matter what barriers separate us, Jesus always shows up. Jesus always seeks us out and finds us where we are. Even behind locked doors. Even when we erect barriers out of fear. Jesus finds us even in the locked room, when we have isolated ourselves. Despite any locked doors, Jesus stands among his beloved ones and says “Peace be with you.” Three times. Here is another strong promise of Jesus’s presence. He has not uttered these words since the Farewell Discourse. This reminds the disciples of the last time they heard these words in John 14:1—“Do not let your hearts be troubled…” at the moment of their greatest distress. 

The idea of peace is not a disembodied peace that Jesus offers—Jesus stands among them and among us, offering the peace of his presence to help assuage our doubts and anxiety. It’s the promise of Jesus’s presence among us that brings us peace.

We are reminded today that, because Jesus loves us individually, there is no pattern in how Jesus comes to us. Jesus adapts his approach to us based on where we are emotionally. With Mary Magdalene, as we remembered last Sunday, it’s in her name being called and hearing the voice of Jesus that she recognizes him. With Thomas, though, the recognition comes through seeing, and being in the presence of Jesus. We have a history of assuming that Thomas touched Jesus, but the text never says that he did, actually. Seeing is the critical thing—seeing, and the reassurance of the restoration of relationship between Jesus and those who love him. And those of us who have gone weeks without seeing co-workers, friends, family, and loved ones in person can certainly understand Thomas’s need to see—not just see, but be in the presence of those we love and so desperately miss. But like Thomas, we have to wait.

Despite what has been depicted in artwork through the centuries, the idea of Thomas not actually touching Jesus can be a powerful metaphor for us right now. As we miss being with each other, with friends and loved ones in particular, Jesus reminds us that presence can exist even when physical touch is impossible. That locked doors cannot keep Jesus away from us. Nor should locked doors keep us from still carrying the good news of Jesus Christ—risen and alive, loving, healing, never-failing—out into the world.

Thomas is the only one who gets the adjective “Doubting” attached to his name as a slur. But remember, in the story we hear today, ALL the apostles were doubtful, or they would not have been afraid. None of them were able to believe until they too had seen Jesus with their own eyes. Thomas is the one who is willing to admit the emotional crisis that all the apostles are feeling, which manifests itself in the locking of doors of the house where they were staying. The two incidents in which Thomas speaks in John’s gospel show him as brave enough, vulnerable enough, and honest enough to admit he has questions.

Doubt is a sign of engaging with our hope and our faith. Doubt is a sign that we are evaluating, learning through questioning—and being vulnerable enough to share those questions and ask for more information when we need it.

When seen without caricature, Thomas has always had a heroic quality to him in my mind. He is willing to admit that he has doubt. He doesn’t keep those doubts to himself, which would have been easier and far more popular. Thomas is willing to give voice to his doubts. And when he gives voice to them, his needs are met. He DOES get to see Jesus. He does get the proof his doubtful heart needs. 

Some would say that we, too, live in a time of doubt. I wonder. Perhaps we should take it a step further. We seem to live in a time of disbelief. Shaped by the modern sensibility, we fear being seen as naïve, gullible, credulous.

Some among us have also decided that authority comes from one’s own decision, rather than from fact, expertise, or authority. And those people endanger us all in their insistence that their hunches and their freedoms—freedoms granted from the bosom of community—are all that matter, that their independence is more important than consideration for others and for the communities which make their lives possible, whether they like that reality or not. 

They refuse to believe that they owe a responsibility to the very community which makes freedom possible. Freedom without responsibility and love for each other and the common good is anarchy. It treats others as mere tools, or worse, threats. Such anarchy is grounded in disbelief that rejects the gospel of Christ, which seeks to promote shalom: community, justice, and empathy as our responsibility for the most vulnerable among us.

Disbelief is the adamant unwillingness to be converted to a new reality, even when presented with evidence. Disbelief is the stopping of the ears to hear that which surrounds us. It is the stubborn rejection of the warnings of a traumatized planet, reeling from tons of pollutants and casual human disregard. Disbelief snuffs out the light of inquiry and douses the wick with water. 

Doubt, on the other hand, is the oxygen that can make the flame burn brighter. Doubt invites examination, and is willing to adapt to new information. When Thomas DOES see Jesus and see his wounds as proof, he exclaims “My Lord and My God!” He abandons his skepticism in the face of proof, and states the unthinkable—that Jesus is not just the Son of God, but IS God. All while also being the same beloved, fully human teacher Thomas has known and loved. We have a God who is fully human and fully divine—that’s why Thomas’s confession is important. 

We are called to proclaim a Savior who is with us in our suffering because he still bears the marks of his own suffering. Those marks Jesus bears are there to remind us that God loves us that much. And we, as the Church, are called to bear our own marks into the world, so that the world, too, can see and believe. These marks and wounds are the sign of a love greater than words can express—a love that, when we open our hearts to it, overflows and spills out of us into a world starving for it.

Thomas’s doubt has led him further toward being a bold, powerful witness to who Jesus truly is. Thomas may have been initially wary or confused, but who isn’t at one time or another? The flame of belief, and of yearning to believe, burns within Thomas, and despite the locked doors, he remains still open to possibility. Especially to the possibility that his relationship with Jesus continues even after the cross and the tomb. And that's a precious lesson for us today, as well.

We have much to learn from Thomas, because Thomas reflects the willingness to suspend stubbornness, cynicism, and anxiety, and to allow the light of mystery to penetrate, bringing him to new understanding and enlightenment, remaking what he has previously known. Thomas may doubt, but he is willing to admit that he does not know everything. He is willing to be shaped and reformed in light of revelation, and to open himself to a new understanding of reality. Thomas is willing to own up to being human.

May we also be willing to doubt, to question, and to proclaim. May we be willing to suspend disbelief enough to see and hear what is right before us. May we make a space within our imaginations to receive new truths, allowing the risen Living Savior to break in among us, and reshape what we think we know.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 service broadcast on Facebook Live on April 19, 2020 for St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:
Acts 2:14a,22-32
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31


Notes:
I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Karoline Lewis for hosting a webinar via Zoom on this text on Friday, April 17, 2020.

Prayer, day 2639: Second Sunday in Easter

Blessed Savior,
we gather around your altars
to praise you
and embody your love in the world. Alleluia!

Bless and keep us this day,
that we may serve You
with our hands and our hearts.
Give us the wisdom
to live into the questions of our lives,
and the strength to examine our convictions.
Help us to plant the seeds of faith deeply 
into the soil of reason, tradition, and witness, 
that we may grow into a mature faith.

Grant peace and encouragement this day, O God, 
for all whom we remember at this hour. 

Amen.

Living Beyond Doubt: Speaking to the Soul, April 16, 2020

Luke 24:36-48

Having to trust what we can’t know is a challenge. That’s the problem the disciples faced as they had their first encounters with the risen Christ. They are clinging to the dead leaves of heartbreak, disbelief, and fear, because they think they have been left bereft, and those leaves are all they have left. It is there that the risen Christ appears among them, reassuring them and preparing them for the next phase in their ministry.

Our readings in the daily office for today remind us of the gift that doubt can give us, and the challenge that we face when we attempt to embrace and proclaim the wonder of God’s presence in our lives, especially during a time of fear such as this. Living beyond and through doubt can give us the clarity of taking our questions seriously and forthrightly.

When doubt becomes disbelief, it can blind us to possibility and imagination, especially that which is required to see the risen Christ in our midst, who often appears where and when we least expect him. He is there in every person asking us for something to eat or drink. He is there in every person who asks us for shelter, or for refuge. He is there, in every person, asking us to really see him and to welcome him.

In this world of pandemic, we face the conundrum that we need the promise of resurrection more than ever, and yet the resurrection IS an incredible thing to believe. Those of us living two millennia after those disciples can take comfort in the fact that those who knew Jesus best during his earthly ministry had to overcome a huge amount of doubt themselves.

Jesus closes with his reminder that his apostles are “witnesses of these things,” a claim we also saw in our first reading at v. 15. Being a witness is a solemn responsibility. Witnesses are expected to testify to the truth, fully and without embellishment. The disciples are called to be witnesses to “all nations.” For those of us who call ourselves “Christians” in the 21st century in North America, that promise rings true- even across the continents and the millenia. Alleluia! We are witnesses!

And that reminds us of our calling. We who are disciples— lay and ordained, doubting as we all are at one time or another—are tasked with carrying that witness out into the world. In last week’s passage from John 20, that was made explicit when Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit upon them, which for us recalls our baptism. We are called to witness to when we have encountered the risen Christ in our midst, or in our hearts.

We are called not just to witness, but to LIVE Resurrection, right now.

In turning toward reconciliation and resurrection, we called to shake off who we have been, and turn instead to embrace and embody who we are called to be. It’s not enough for us to see the glory of resurrection and what promises it holds for ourselves. We are called to witness to that resurrection and how it continues to work in a world that desperately needs to see it and be transformed, too.

And that resurrection must be seen through us, as we rise too into new life, now, choosing to set our faces and hearts toward Christ. Jesus Christ is with us, risen indeed. He is still calling us to embrace life and love over death and need, calling us to place the well-being of each other, compassion, grace, generosity, and mercy at the center of our rebuilt lives. Jesus is calling us to embrace him by embracing our responsibilities to each other, to walk in the way of abundant love where there are no winners or losers. Only overflowing compassion and empathy, and acting for the reconciliation and dignity of every single part of this beautiful creation that offers us its beauties even in times of turmoil.

First published on Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul for April 16, 2020.

Photo of a window at Trinity Episcopal Church, Tulsa, OK.

Seeing Resurrection: Sermon for Easter 2C

He looked and saw not what was, but what could be.

How different would our story of “Doubting Thomas” be if that was what we could say about him? And about us--- because, let’s face it. We are ALL doubting Thomases.

But many of us only see what we want to see—it’s a defense mechanism, I guess. Some of us only see what affects us, in the short term, right now. And that’s a problem, and a danger, especially when that leads us into doing things that in the long run will hurt us. At least Thomas dropped his resistance to belief when presented with physical evidence of Jesus’s resurrection, and let’s face it, some among us aren’t even that flexible in today’s society.

But thank God, we have examples of people who, actually, like Jesus, call us to see beyond the short term, to see beyond the boundaries of our own concerns, to believe that change for the better is not only possible but begins with us, even in the humblest of actions and attitudes.

Jadav Payeng of India’ s Assam region is an example of someone who has the ability to see what ISN’T there, but could be. As a young man, Jadav, a member of the Mishing tribe and the son of a buffalo trader, lived near a sandbar island in the middle of the Brahmaputra River that had been separated by erosion from the mainland.

It was a desert so sandy and hot that snakes died there from the scorching heat. That’s when Jadav saw in those dead snakes a shared potential fate, and decided to do something about it. When he looked at the barren sandbar, he perceived a warning from the deforestation of his region—deforestation that he realized had led to the erosion that created his island, and threatened not just himself and his tribespeople and the animals upon which they depended but threatened everyone.

But further, when he looked at that sandbar, he perceived what it could be: a beautiful forest, a habitat for animals and humans that would help preserve his people’s way of life and help those downstream along the river.

And so, in 1979, he began planting trees on his barren island, inspired and taught by a visiting scientist who taught him in his youth about trees. Every day, for nearly 40 years, even when people derided him as crazy, he has arisen before dawn to be able to plant trees in addition to supporting his family, starting with bamboo trees and then expanding to larger varieties. The forest he has created that bears his nickname, Molai, now covers over 1300 acres, and he plans to plant 4,000 more acres.

What once was a barren, scorched landscape of sand now is home to monkeys, butterflies, birds, tigers, deer, and even a herd of elephants. The man who once was considered crazy is now respected and hailed as a conservationist and visionary and showered with honors(1), much as Wangari Maathai was for her reforestation work in the Green Belt Movement she founded in Kenya that won her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

One person, seeing not what IS but what can be, is a force of incredible power.

Our gospel is a reminder to us about the human need to see for ourselves, and I think poor Thomas gets shamed unfairly. I’ve always found the story of Thomas to be comforting. If even one of the apostles refused to believe without seeing, then perhaps we all can be forgiven for our occasional doubts. Thomas is like one of us post-Enlightenment types. We are all like Thomas, if we are really honest with ourselves. We all want proof. 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.

Let’s keep in mind that the action in this passage takes place still on Easter Sunday and the Sunday afterward. In the gospel of John, Mary Magdalene is the one who finds the empty tomb and then herself sees the risen Christ, whom at first she mistakes for a gardener-- perhaps like Jadav. She has already run back and told the apostles about what she had seen and experienced, and yet—notice, the apostles aren’t out looking for Jesus. Instead, they are hiding in a room with the doors shut tight, afraid that they are going to be arrested and thrown into prison—or worse—by the Jewish authorities. Could it be that Jesus’s missing corpse leads them to believe that the danger now is actually great for them?

But in choosing to act out of fear rather than love and hope, they lock themselves away from proclaiming the good news. Because they have not seen Jesus, they do not join Mary Magdalene in rejoicing. So let’s give poor Thomas a break, okay? He is no different than any of the other disciples—he’s just brave enough to say it out loud: unless I see for myself the marks on Jesus’s body from the cross and the spear, I won’t believe. No, not just that, I want to touch those wounds too.

The Resurrection story is a fantastic story—unbelievable, even. It’s no wonder people wanted and still want proof. Unfortunately, we live in a time when even proof is not enough for some people. That makes proclaiming faith in the risen Christ even harder. And when you add in that a large part of the Christian world keeps attempting to make God into a magical combination of Santa Claus and Buffy the Vampire Slayer—well, you can see the difficulty. We expect God to magically solve our own problems so we won’t have to.

But what happens when we humans, created in God’s own image with memory, reason, skill, choose to deny our own agency (and conveniently our own responsibility) in times of trouble or crisis—especially when those crises are CAUSED by us--rather than live into our call to use the gifts God has given us to act against evil, hopelessness, cruelty, deforestation, or other impending disasters? We help sow the seeds of real disbelief—not just doubt—in God’s existence before those who do not know anything of God but what we claim about God.

That’s another locked room, though. A locked room that will not protect us from the fears that we all struggle against—the fear of isolation, the fear of rejection, the fear of loss.

We have a different challenge from those apostles, living after Jesus’s ascension as we do. Our challenge is one of perception: to perceive the face of Christ and the imprint of God all around us, even in the faces of those who are vastly different from us.

What if we looked and saw not what IS, but what could be?

What if we looked and saw what is—and realized that we are empowered by our Creator with abundant gifts—including the gift of the Holy Spirit-- to act, and act with courage and love, when we see pain or suffering or wrongdoing?

What if we saw what COULD BE, and CAN be, if we look through the eyes of resurrection, with resurrection sight?

What if we took it seriously—that the risen Jesus is all around us, in the faces of our loved ones but even more in the face of the stranger, in the face of the person looking for acceptance and community, in the faces of children who are hungry although living in one of the richest countries in the world or who are trying to receive asylum there.

As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins noted, “Christ plays in ten thousand places.” And he weeps and waits and mourns with us in ten thousand more, it sometimes seems—especially as we hear news yesterday of another attack on a synagogue. But our risen Savior knows our fears and our suffering, our joys and our triumphs because he is one of us still, waiting to be recognized, calling us to the discipleship we claim as members of his Body, the Church.

Jesus’s call to each of us who believe in him is one of Resurrection and the rejection of death and suffering as having the last word—but that is too often exactly how our world is organized. Jesus’s call to each of us IS to look and see what CAN BE. To perceive with those hearts we’ve been given, for the love of God, and the love of others.

When Jesus encounters us in the rooms in which we’ve locked ourselves out of fears, he offers his peace—a peace as broad and deep as the sky above us. But Jesus also calls us to act out of that peace in the name of justice and love-in-action. Our willingness to perceive beyond what just our eyes can see—to perceive with our hearts, to perceive with the light of hope to illumine what COULD be even when we can’t see clearly with our physical sight—is to me the story for all of us who have been and will continue to be in Thomas’s shoes at many points in our lives.

May we have the courage to unlock the doors that lock out the world out of fear. May we open the doors to those around us, in the name of the risen One whom we still experience as the love that animates our lives. May we proclaim our faith in the sure hope of the Resurrection, seeing what CAN BE, and can never die, through faith.

Alleluia! Amen.


Preached at the 505 on April 27 and the 8:00 and 10:15 services at St. Martin's Episcopal Church Ellisville.

Readings:
John 20:19-31

Notes:
(1) Julie McCarthy, "A Lifetime of Planting Trees on a Remote River Island: Meet India's Forest Man," broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition, December 26, 2017, at https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/12/26/572421590/hed-take-his-own-life-before-killing-a-tree-meet-india-s-forest-man

Resurrection Faith: Sermon for the Third Sunday in Easter, Year B

As is fitting and proper during the season of Easter, we again have readings this Sunday that all deal with belief, doubt, and unbelief.

You might think I am being redundant with those last two. Aren’t doubt and unbelief the same thing? I would argue that the answer is “No.” And that’s because we often get too squishy with our language. First, unbelief is a refusal to open ourselves to the possibility that something can be true. Unbelief is what Peter is addressing in our reading from Acts today. Unbelief can be as inflexible as bone, but it can also be a reasonable response to something that is just “too good to be true.”

Doubt is a way-station between belief and unbelief—doubt is an acknowledgement that certainty may not be attained, and yet a willingness to wrestle with the unknown. Doubt is an openness to conversation, a doorway into relationship between what we know and what we may not trust yet trust.

Finally, “faith” and “knowledge” are not the same thing at all, and although they can be complementary, they certainly aren’t opposed to each other. One of the things that I love about the Episcopal Church, and that drew me to it when I was twelve, is that here we can have our faith and our scientific knowledge, too, unlike some of the churches which I attended as a child. In a religious context, faith is trusting in something even if we may not have knowledge of it. Faith is often married to the future, looking forward to what seems ephemeral, or even impossible. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews explains.

Yet the path we take to get to faith is rarely straightforward. Most of us do not stay in any one position in our spiritual lives, but often swing like a pendulum from faith, to doubt, to unbelief, and back again. Jesus’s patience with the disciples reminds us of how normal that is.

Singer-songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman beautifully describes what faith is like in the first verse of her song “Every December Sky:”

Every December sky
Must lose its faith in leaves
And dream of the spring inside the trees.
How heavy the empty heart,
How light the heart that's full.
Sometimes I have to trust what I can't know;
Sometimes I have to trust what I can’t know.

Now, I am no fan of winter, but there’s some deep wisdom there. The dead leaves have to be released, and when they are, the bare branches are then revealed, reaching for the sky with a naked longing that is all too often obscured under the cloud of green they wear for half the year. By December, even the bell-shaped leaves of the blackjack oak that have rattled overhead for months in the forests around here begin to get ready to give way so that the new buds can push their way through. By April, we STILL have faith that spring will come-- come on, Spring!-- even as we shiver-- AGAIN!-- today. It's gotta come, right?

Those leaves have to give way, in faith that there WILL be spring stirring inside those trees, stirring even in December, so that the forest can shine out with new life and growth again. The trees unfurl their leaves in faith of the warming spring, and they shed their leaves in faith even in winter’s grip.


The sap will rise in the pines, and the buds will break out on redbud, hickory, and oak, revealing what seems foolish to be instead a thread of the deep wisdom that binds creation together. Autumn is not an ending, but is instead an act of faith—spring is its fruition, a slow turning fueled by hope and approaching joy.

Having to trust what we can’t know is a challenge. That’s the problem the disciples faced as they had their first encounters with the risen Christ. They are clinging to the dead leaves of heartbreak, disbelief, and fear, because they think they have been left bereft, and those leaves are all they have left. It is there that the risen Christ appears among them, reassuring them and preparing them for the next phase in their ministry.

The gospel passages of these last two weeks especially are held in complementry tension with each other. Both gospels have Jesus appear to the fearful disciples on the evening of Easter Sunday. Both gospels have Jesus addressing the fear of the disciples with an offering of Christ’s peace. This week’s version from Luke omits Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit on them (Luke has that happen on Pentecost in the Book of Acts). Instead of Thomas doubting, we get a flat statement that, even after seeing the wounds of Jesus’s crucifixion, all the disciples are filled with wonder—and unbelief. They are so caught up in the events of the previous few days that they cannot accept at first what is happening to them right now in the present. And if the apostles themselves have problems moving to faith, what a comfort that is to us, living 2000 years and a half of the world away!

Jesus’s first words here in Luke this Sunday, just as we saw in the gospel of John last Sunday, is to bless them with peace. Just like in John’s gospel, this is in response to their fear, which Jesus understands. He then commands those present to look at him- to truly see him, and to know that he is real. Of course, the 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. This also directly addresses the doubts of those who attempted to understand Jesus as never being fully human—an argument that has divided Christians throughout the history of the Church.

Passages such as the ones we have heard the last two weeks help underscore the humanity of Jesus, risen and fully alive, breathing and enfleshed, hungry and thirsty. “Have you anything here to eat?” he asks—apparently in their joy they have forgotten how to be good hosts. Perhaps they did not believe that Jesus really was alive, even though they have seen the wounds. We are reminded that, even in their joy, they were “disbelieving” and “still wondering.” Asking to be fed emphasizes that Jesus is real flesh, fully one of us.

We also are called to see the risen Christ in our midst, especially when he is where we least expect him. He is there in every person asking us for something to eat or drink. He is there in every person who asks us for shelter, or for refuge.

He is there, in every person, asking us to really see him and to welcome him.

Jesus then “opened their minds” to the full understanding of how he was the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets—the same claim Peter was making in our first reading from Acts. To be fair, given Jesus’s penchant for teaching using parables, especially obscure ones, he doesn’t seem that frustrated to be having to explain everything plainly now. They have all, after all, been through a terrible ordeal. And the resurrection IS an incredible thing to believe. Those of us living two millennia later can take comfort in the fact that those who knew Jesus best during his earthly ministry had to overcome a huge amount of doubt themselves. And that reminds us of our calling.

We who are disciples— lay and ordained, doubting as we all are at one time or another—are tasked with carrying that witness out into the world. In last week’s passage from John 20, that was made explicit when Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit upon them, which for us recalls our baptism.

We live in a world in which cynicism, faithlessness, and self-centeredness have been raised to art forms. We tell ourselves that this is the way of the world. We tell ourselves that “looking out for Number One” protects us and makes us stronger. But as Christians, we are repeatedly reminded that these kinds of things are dead leaves that prevent us from the dream of God for our lives. Placing our faith in those dead leaves prevents us from making room in our hearts for the welling up of the love of Christ within us, that leads to true peace, contentment, and joy. Like those disciples, we are called to witness to how we have encountered the risen Christ in our midst, or in our hearts.

We are called not just to witness, but to LIVE Resurrection, right now. As an act of faith, and an act of being.

Jesus—risen, living, one of us—calls us to rededicate ourselves to a Resurrection Faith-- a faith that responds to God’s grace by seeking to living out the love of Christ into the world. A faith that drops the mask of cynicism that we often adopt to protect our fragile, broken hearts. One that calls us instead to open ourselves up to the joy of life that rises like dawn from the deepest darkness that we allow to settle over our souls.

We worship a living Savior—one who endured all-- all for the sake of love, as our epistle reminds us, love that makes us God’s children too. That love leads us to resurrect our faith in ourselves, and in others, to be more perfect, more loving, more compassionate.

A Resurrection Faith is one that calls us not to just love God out of fear of the terrible punishment we think we deserve for our manifold sins, but calls us to love God through living out the Great Commandment: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your strength, and all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself."

A Resurrection Faith calls us to the work of building up rather than tearing down. A Resurrection Faith raises us all from the dead, and calls us to be alive in each moment and in each other. A Resurrection Faith calls us to be, not just profess.

A Resurrection Faith that calls us to lose our faith in the dead leaves of fear to which we cling, so that we stretch toward the light of Christ, knowing that the spring of faith is inside us, waiting to rise. 

Amen.

Readings:
Acts 3:12-19
Psalm 4
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48

Notes:
(1) Beth Nielsen Chapman, "Every December Sky," from her album Deeper Still, 2002.

Images:
(1) Duccio di Buoninsegna, Appearance While the Apostles are at Table, 1308-1311.
(2) Leslie Scoopmire, "December Sky/ Bare Branches, Rising Birds," December, 2011.
(3) Blackjack oak leaves.
(4) Leslie Scoopmire, "Budding joy," May, 2013.
(5) Leslie Scoopmire, "Asleep in a La Rambla Doorway, Barcelona," Barcelona, May, 2016.
(6) A copy of "Homeless Christ," a scultpture by Timothy P. Schmalz, located outside Catholic Charities in Washington DC.


Preached at Christ Episcopal Church, Rolla, at the 8:00 and 10:00 am services, April 15, 2018.
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