​On Easter Sunday, we heard how Mary went to the tomb, early in the morning, and discovered that the tomb was empty.  She ran to tell the disciples, who in turn, ran to the tomb to see for themselves.  Peter, and another disciple eventually looked in and found only the cloths that had been used bind the Lord’s body.  Not knowing what else to do, they went home.

Mary, though, stayed. Stayed longer than the others.  When she looked into the tomb, she saw two angels, and they asked her why she was weeping.  Outside the tomb, she encountered Jesus, though at first she thought he was the gardener.  She knew it was Jesus when he said her name.

Last week, we heard how the disciples were all gathered together except Thomas, and though the door was locked, Jesus appeared among them.  He said ‘Peace be with you’, and they knew it was Jesus.  Later that week, again all together, this time with Thomas, Jesus appeared to them a second time, also saying ‘Peace be with you’.  Jesus encouraged Thomas to put his finger in the holes in his hand, to put his hand in the hole in his side.  When Thomas did that, he knew it was Jesus.

Today, we heard how the disciples were traveling on the road to a place called Emmaus.  On the way, they encountered a stranger.  Their conversation turned to the recent crucifixion of Jesus, and the stranger talked about scripture, and how it was all related.  When they had reached their destination, they invited the stranger to stay with them, and when they sat down to eat, when they broke bread, they knew it was Jesus.

If those of us who struggle to be the church in the 21st century hope to know Jesus, scripture gives us a few hints on how we might make that happen: we’ll have to wait around the empty tomb long enough to encounter Jesus, or we’ll have to be patient to wait until he speaks our name, or we’ll have to gather together enough times to share his peace with one another, saying ‘Peace be with you’ to each other, or, we have to be close enough to Jesus to put our fingers in the holes in his hands, or put our hands in the hole in his side, or we have to gather to break bread together.

The community that the writer of John’s Gospel was trying to reach was in a tough spot: they were cut off from their Jewish brothers and sisters due to their belief in Jesus as the son of God.  They were cut off from their Christian brothers and sisters because of their particular way of being community.  The author of John’s gospel was writing to a community that needed desperately to be reassured of their place in relationship to the sacred, in relationship with Jesus.

Oddly enough, the community that wishes to continue to be the church in the 21st century needs desperately to be reassured of our place in relationship to the sacred, needs desperately to be reassured of our relationship with Jesus.

So what are we to do?  We need to be the church.  We need to do what Mary did, and stay around long enough to encounter Jesus.  We need to do what the disciples did, and gather often enough to share the peace of Christ with each other, and with others.  We need to do what Thomas did, and get close enough to Jesus to touch his wounded hands and side.  We need to do what the disciples did, and break bread together so that Jesus will be known to us, too.  All these things are about being the church.  About gathering together, about being present and ready for the presence of Christ.  And they don’t seem that difficult!

But if we don’t gather, if we aren’t patient outside the tomb, and we go home, we’ll miss Jesus.  If we don’t gather, if we aren’t together to pass the peace of Christ, or if we aren’t close enough to Jesus to touch his hands and side, we’ll miss him.  If we don’t break bread together, we’ll miss him.  And if we miss him, if we continue to try and be the church without gathering, what will we be?

In my home church, growing up, I remember interviewing a parishioner as part of my confirmation process.  I had to ask a series of questions about their faith, their participation in the local church, and possibly, the wider church.  When I asked about attendance, he told me that during the nicer weather, he worshiped at the altar of the 18 links.

Since then, I’ve had parishioners tell me that they will often worship when camping, fishing, doing laundry, going to the beach, skiing, or hiking.

And these things can very much bring us closer to the sacred, and they very well may be enjoyable and even spiritually fulfilling.  But they won’t bring us to Jesus.  To do that, we’ll need to be together.

Here’s an interesting thing: on the ancient maps, there is no place called Emmaus.  In Hebrew, its meaning is something like ‘deep longing’.  So in our scripture today, the disciples were on the road to ‘deep longing’, and were joined by Jesus, who was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Perhaps the answer to the steep decline in the health of our churches these days isn’t in recreating the successes of the 1950’s, ‘60’s, and 70’s, but instead lies in recreating the early communities that literally and symbolically feared for their very existence, and gathered together as much for protection and support as they did to worship.

Regular gathering for worship, regular gathering for passing the peace, and regular gathering for breaking bread together seems like a pretty good recipe for seeing Jesus.

Fairmount members might remember this story, but I’m going to tell it again: A little over 20 years ago, I became acquainted with a middle-aged couple named Tim and Cheryl.  Cheryl was a special education teacher nearing retirement, and Tim was a retired auto worker who also happened to be blind.  I had been bitten by the cycling bug, I loved riding my bike, and often, my conversations with Tim revolved around cycling.  He told me that as a teenager, at his school for the blind, he had been taught to ride a tandem bike.  He knew how to keep his balance, even though he could not see.  We cooked up a plan to find a used tandem bike so that we might ride together.  When we told his wife Cheryl, she looked at me like I was crazy, and she said, ‘Gary, are you trying to see Jesus?!’

I suspect what she meant was that another way to see Jesus is to be near death, which makes a lot of sense to me, but that seems like an awfully dangerous way to see Jesus.  It seems a lot safer to just gather regularly, pass the peace of Christ, and break bread together, don’t you think?

The Johannine community, the group of faithful that the author of John’s gospel was trying to reach, didn’t worry about how many members they had, they worried about the quality of their interactions with each other, and with Jesus.

We could take a page out of their playbook: if we became more concerned with the quality of our faith interactions, and worried less about how many people are in the pews on Sundays, we just might survive these difficult times.

Focusing on our ability to live into our hopes, live into our faith, as opposed to living out of our fears, might just bring us to our Lord and Savior.  Using Mary and the disciples as a template for our own faith practices may open up new ways for us to see Jesus.  I still would like to get Tim on a tandem bike, just to see if we could ride together, but that’s just me.  I’ve always been a bit of a risk taker…

We are an Easter People.  At the very heart of our faith, at the very core of our understanding of our faith lies the process of death and resurrection.  Jesus teaches us in his own way about the seed that must die and be buried before it can grow into a plant, our own seasons show us that after the death of winter, plants find new life in the spring.  Over and over again, repeated cycle after cycle, there is death, and there is resurrection.

So why do we fear the coming death so much?  When will we be able to accept that we won’t experience new life, resurrection, for the church until the old church dies away? When will we trust that the cycle, the process, is both natural, and necessary? 

Gathering in Christ’s name to pass the peace, to worship God, and to break bread together puts an emphasis on our relationship with Jesus, and not on our survival.  These things help us to see how the church can be stronger in order to do the things Jesus calls us to do for and with our neighbors, and even our enemies.  It can also show us how trying to meet our own needs through the church can get us on the wrong path.  Ironically enough, our survival will be guaranteed if we could focus on being the church again, for the sake of others, and be worried less about the church that meets our own needs.

It’s beginning to look like the church of the 21st century is more of a means to live out our faith than a way to serve ourselves.  Like the disciples on the road to ‘deep longing’, the church of the future will be part of a journey, not a destination.  When we try to make it a destination, we risk losing sight of Jesus.
​
On our own collective journeys of deep longing, if we are patient, if we can wait by the empty tomb long enough for Jesus to call us by name, if we can share the peace of Christ with each other, and with others, if we can be close enough to Jesus to touch his hands and side, if we can gather to intentionally break bread together, Jesus will be known to us, and we will be doing the work of the 21st century church.  Let’s get to it.  Amen.

​Good old Thomas!  He comes around once a year to serve as the perfect metaphor for those of us who need some proof, who need to see for ourselves.  Unfortunately, Jesus doesn’t walk around anymore letting people touch his hands and side.

Now, there are many things I love about my job, the job of being a pastor.  Baptisms, weddings, serving communion, preaching…and sharing the good news.

The UCC and the PCUSA as denominations accept of diverse theologies among their members.  Several of us may differ widely on any number of beliefs or issues, and yet we are all welcome in worship, welcome at the table for the Lord’s Supper, welcome to celebrate baptism…the both denominations welcome those who have questions, those who have doubts.  As reformed denominations, neither claim to have answers, or the answer, and only claim to welcome all those who wish to know Jesus better, who wish to know the bible better, all those who wish to know the Creator God and the Holy Spirit better.  But it doesn’t tell us how to do that, or if the way we do it is right or wrong.  Neither the United Church of Christ nor the Presbyterian Church USA have a theological litmus test for membership, but they sure appreciates those who have questions.

Our God, our Savior, and the wondrous and mysterious Holy Spirit are certainly big enough and strong enough to withstand any of our doubts, to weather any and all our questions about faith, and about the sacred.

So one aspect of the good news that comes from Thomas’ story today is that questioners are welcome.  It’s not only OK to ask the questions, it’s encouraged, if that’s what you need to believe!  Of course, if you insist on putting your hand in the wounds of our Savior’s hands, you may wait a long time…the days of Jesus letting us do that are long gone.  We’ll have to get our answers a different way.

The whole encounter is filled with mystery, isn’t it?  Jesus appeared among the gathered disciples, and said, Peace be with You.  They recognized him after he showed them his hands and his side.  Interesting that Jesus chose to be resurrected in his old, broken body, isn’t it?  Even though nobody recognized him at first, not Mary, earlier, and not the disciples, later that day.

And, after being welcomed by the disciples, Jesus shared his important message: forgive others, and you will be forgiven.  Hold grudges against others, and grudges will be held against you. 

For Mary, just hours before, it was ‘don’t hold on to the old me’ don’t cling to the old ways.  For the disciples, it was about forgiving, and being forgiven.

Both messages are critical for the faithful of today.

Thomas was with the disciples the next week, and he saw, and he believed.  Jesus, ever mysterious, asked, so you believe because you saw? Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.  So while Jesus affirms that it’s OK to ask questions, to doubt, he also hints that it’s even more OK to believe without seeing.

Richard Rohr, an author known for his writing on Spirituality and spiritual direction, feels that Jesus is telling us that we’re blessed when we know more than what we can just see.  That we’re blessed when we can know more than what we can simply experience.  We know more about the Sacred, more about God, about the Savior, and about the Holy Spirit than we can see with our eyes.

Taking our holy scriptures literally is ok, but understanding them from a metaphorical or symbolic perspective is even better.

Here’s a list of things that we can experience literally, and symbolically, and tell me if some of them work for you both ways: the cross, broken bread, juice or wine, baptismal water, church budgets.

The cross can mean so many things: death, shame, triumph, or something we must bear…

Broken bread at communion can mean the broken body of Jesus, it can mean our own brokenness at the table, it can mean sustenance for the journey…

Juice or wine at communion can mean shed blood from our Savior, it can mean the new covenant, it can mean refreshment for the journey…

Baptismal water can mean cleansing, it can mean new life, it can mean new promises…

Our understanding of our faith is so much deeper when we move beyond the first step of literal understanding.  We are blessed when we believe in these things, not because we see them literally, but because we have not seen how they are all these things.  We are blessed because each of us brings a slightly different perspective to our faith lives, and our beliefs, and yet, we gather here in our differentness, not to argue, not to challenge each other, but to seek our highest common denominator in our prayers and in our worship.

Arguments about whether the bread and wine of communion are somehow mysteriously transformed into the body and blood of Christ, or whether they are simply symbols of the body and blood helped lead to the Reformation, and the start of the Protestant faith.  We are surrounded by symbols that we see and experience as literal objects, but which represent faith aspects that go so much deeper than the objects themselves.  That’s what Jesus meant, and that’s what Richard Rohr meant about believing in more than what we can see.

So while we may consider ourselves to be like Thomas, for the most part, our maturing faith has moved us into believing beyond that which we can see and touch. 

And because of that, we, too, can share in the joy described by our Acts passage: we will not be shaken, our hearts are glad, our tongues rejoice, and we will live in hope.  These are the gifts we receive when we believe beyond what we can see and touch.  These are the blessings Jesus wants us to experience, even if we start out like Thomas.

Easter flowers, images of lambs, lit candles, foot washing, serving communion, all actual things, but each also represent a different aspect of our faith.  We see beyond the thing, and believe something about what it stands for.

Passing the Peace, like Jesus did, is both a literal act of saying ‘Peace Be With You’, and a symbolic act of sharing something much deeper than a greeting.  If you’ll indulge me for a moment, I would like to invite you to greet your neighbor, and pass the Peace of Christ to them, so that you might experience both the literal and the symbolic meaning of a faith act.
​
Now, whether we look at our Acts passage this morning as a literal, historical recording of the early church, or whether we look at it as a symbol of how they existed spiritually, doesn’t the very description of that life stand out as a jarring contrast to the world as we know it?

The community that followed Jesus discovered that one way to eliminate need and poverty was to share their resources in a faithful and loving way.  With the new commandment to love one another just as Jesus had loved them, they worked out a system that ensured that there was enough for all.

We do much the same today when we contribute to our general fund to keep our church running.  We do much the same today when we give to Our Church’s Wider Mission, to keep the systems that support our church running.  We do much the same today when we set aside money in the Pastor’s discretionary fund for some of the neediest members and non-members.
The origins of our church economy come directly from the early church’s efforts to organize and sustain a faithful following of Christians.  But what a radical approach!  Land and home owners selling their property and voluntarily giving the proceeds to the disciples so that they may distribute them to those who need it.  Crazy stuff!

Time, culture, and the evolution of the modern world have conspired to erode the effectiveness of such a system.  Would such a system be sustainable today?  Probably not in its purest form.  But the spirit behind the system is still strong, still relevant, still effective.  If it were not, then the institution of the church would have failed financially a long time ago.  It may be struggling, but it has not yet failed.  

And we do have some systems that are functioning in modern times, based on exactly such a process: all charities rely on givers so that they can share with those less fortunate, those whom they serve.  That means all not-for-profits, that means all school systems, where community members pay property tax, even if they don’t have children in school.  Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are based on contributions from those who are employed to help those who are unable to work, or who no longer work.

And while the current thinking is that some of these systems need to be smaller, or more efficient, the church has something that none of these other groups has: a commandment from Jesus.

While Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, charities and not-for-profits, school systems, insurance pools, and a whole host of other organizations that base their existence on this kind of system survive in these modern times, they don’t cite Jesus as the founding principle behind their organization.  The church does.

Where else do you experience both the literal and the symbolic when it comes to a faith act?  It’s unique and personal to each of us: prayer? Hymn singing?  Volunteering? Tithing or pledging?  I would invite each of us to take a moment sometime today to reflect on where we experience both literal and symbolic meaning in our faith lives, and how that brings us blessings and joys.

Our lives are filled with literal and symbolic acts of kindness, forgiveness, charity, and acceptance.  When we practice them, we deepen our connection to the sacred.  When we do so without regard for any reward or benefit, we are practicing our faith at the highest level.
​
Unshaken in the face of tragedy, glad in the face of challenges, rejoicing and hoping in a world that insists on proof, let us each explore the blessings of what it means to believe where we have not seen.  Amen.