26March2000sermon.htm

Sermon for Easter 2, Year B, 30 April 2000

St Luke's, Metuchen & St Stephen's Riverside

Readings: John 20: 19-31

Sometimes
it's the drama
which gets our attention.

Noah, awash in a world-wetting sea
in what amounted to
a zoo with oars.
David,
a puny teenager
facing up to the giant Goliath
with a slingshot
and a few stones.
Jesus,
out by a lake
with thousands of hungry people
and just 5 bread rolls and 2 fish
for food.

But sometimes the drama
hides other
perhaps even more important
things. Take this week's gospel reading, for example.
Every year
on the first Sunday after Easter
the lectionary has us read
verses 19 through 31
of the second to last chapter
of the gospel
of John.
And every year we are captivated by the spectacle of Thomas
standing in the middle of the room,
waving his hands in the air
and stubbornly declaring
that what he can't see
he won't believe.

But you know,
that isn't the whole story.
You see, what we miss, is what happened the week before.
It was
what we now know as
Easter night,
the third day
after Jesus
had been crucified, the third day
since the hopes of his followers
had been put to death as well,
the third day
of mourning and confusion
and fear.

It was evening,
and the disciples were together again, some of them, anyway.
Most likely the twelve, the inner core, were there, though Thomas at least
was missing. Perhaps there were others, people who had been following
Jesus through the passion of that last
holy
week,
perhaps the women were there, still breathless with the news
of the empty tomb
and uncertain whether
to believe
or despair.
The doors were locked, the keys turned, the bolts firmly in place - there
was a certain finality about the sound as the last bar dropped in its slot -
and they were safe, at least temporarily.
No one knew
if the religious leaders who had condemned the Christ
were waiting to condemn them as well, no one knew
if the guards whose presence
was not enough to keep the tombstone in place
would try to hide their own failure
in revenge, no one knew
if the women's story was more
than a vain hope
clothed in the certainty of hysteria.
And so they counted heads and locked the doors,
and wondered
what they should do next.

And suddenly
in the midst of them
was Jesus.
Standing there,
almost as if
nothing had ever happened.
Except the doors were locked
and now
there were no crowds outside
clamoring to feel his healing touch
or hear his life-giving words.
Standing
in the silence
of their fear
and confusion.
"Peace
to you,"
he said,
and they stared at him with wide eyes.
And he showed them
his hands,
wrists bloodied and torn from the nails,
and his side
a gaping wound.
It was as if
a ghost
stood among them. A ghost,
and yet so real, so substantial, so full of life
that there could be no doubt.
The voices of fear in their minds
sprang with joy,
their hearts turned somersaults,
and they recognized
the risen Christ.

And he spoke again.
"Peace to you. As the Father sent me, so I send you."
And he breathed on them, and it was as if nothing had changed and
everything had changed.
"Receive holy spirit;" he said,
"if you forgive the sins of any
they are forgiven
and is retain the sins of any, they are retained."

And then, as far as we know, he was gone. There is no mention of him again
until the following week, when Thomas appears on the scene. Just a few
minutes, and he was gone. But that brief appearance
enough
to set the world
on fire.

*****

Easter
is a problem for us.
Good Friday is fine,
most of us have no problem understanding
the torture of suffering,
the ugliness of death.
We may not like it,
but we see it, we see it all too often
at least on TV,
on Thursday night, we see it in the eyes
of the Ethiopian woman who walked five days without food or water
to a village of refuge
only to find
that 150 hundred and fifty people had died there in the last month
and they could not feed her two children either.
We see it in the eyes of the homeless man muttering to himself,
whose mind will not let him rest
as he lurches through the subway.
We see it in the eyes
of the skeletal figure
who we once knew as lover
or friend
or mother
wasted away the invasions
of microscopic enemies.
We know
about suffering.

But Easter is altogether
more difficult.
Resurrection
is not something we expect to see
on the daily news, it is not something
exactly common.
We don't understand it.
And so, I suspect, most of us
ignore it.
We go through the deprivations of Lent, the passion of Holy Week,
the celebrations of Easter Day
and then
we forget about it.

Never mind
that the church year
would have us celebrate Easter
for another seven joy-filled weeks,
come Monday morning,
the eggs are put away,
we go back to school and work,
and it is almost as if
it had never happened.

And why is this?
I think
its because
we don't know what to do
with the resurrection.
We get bogged down in discussions
about how it happened.
and whether it was just resuscitation,
like someone who successfully receives CPR,
only this time it was three days rather than
three minutes.
Was this Jesus who the disciples saw, like his friend Lazarus,
really just a revivified corpse?
And you see the problem with that
is that Lazarus
had to die again,
and if it was simply a matter
of a restoration of his old life,
then nothing
had changed.
It was kind of as if
the whole passion thing, the trial and crucifixion and cold stony tomb
was just a terrible nightmare,
and now is time to wake up and get on with life.
Following the rabbi, the teacher,
living a good and faithful life,
business as usual.

But you know,
that's not good enough.
Because if that is all its about, then this Christianity business
is all just pie in the sky, where we pretend that nothing bad ever happens
and the world can be changed
by being nice.
It is as if nothing
had ever happened.

Because you see,
the gospel reading for today
would have it different.
This resurrection thing
is more than just a corpse
which comes back to life,
this is about a Jesus
who carries the very signs of death,
holes in his hands and his side,
this is about a Jesus
who is transformed enough to pass through locked doors
yet real enough to touch,
this is about a Jesus
who breathes into his followers
holy spirit,
so that from them on
there is something of him,
something of God
in them,
and they can never be the same again.
This is about a Jesus
who in his ordinary life
amazed people
by claiming to forgive sins,
who in resurrection
sent his followers with that very same commission
to forgive sins.
This resurrection
is not "business as usual."

This resurrection
is about God
transforming humanity
in Christ.

And what that means for us
is not, I think,
about us saying to this person over here,
your sins are forgiven,
and that person over there,
your sins are not,
it is not
about God
letting us pick and choose
who
God will forgive.
Because I'm simply not convinced
that's the way God works.

It's about God
commissioning us
to take the incredible gift which Christ gave us,
the gift Christ gave us through his death and his resurrection,
to take the gift of forgiveness
into a broken world.

It's about Christ
breathing into us
holy spirit, the spirit of God,
so that where ever we go and whatever we do,
we are God people,
the faces of God
in our world.

It's about God
who in Christ came into our world
in a tangible
credible
way,
continuing to come into the world
tangibly, credibly
in Christ's followers.
Tangibly
credibly, in us.

And perhaps
that
is the real drama.

Not Noah,
not David,
not even Thomas.

But God

daring to entrust
us
with the message of
hope
where there is only despair,
forgiveness
when we expect punishment,
and life
where we anticipate death.

That
is what the resurrection
is all about.

Thanks be to God.

Raewynne J. Whiteley
30 April 2000