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.
0 Comments
Just two days before, Jesus had been crucified, and had died, and was placed in a tomb. The disciples did the only thing they could think of, which was to go home. Go home to their families, to their routines, to some kind of normalcy. To some kind of safety. Perhaps they thought it was all over. That with the death of Jesus died the ministry, the prophecy, the miracles, and teaching. Mary may have gone home, but something drew her back to the tomb. Our gospel lesson doesn’t say, but it was written 60 or 70 years after all this had happened. It’s hard to imagine the writer even being alive when all this happened. But Mary couldn’t sleep. Restless like many of us when we lose someone we love, she went to the last place she saw Jesus. Like those of us who visit the graves of our loved ones, perhaps she sought comfort in that final resting place. It would have been quiet. Like our cemeteries are quiet. The gospel tells us that when she got to the tomb, the stone that covered the opening had been rolled away. Was she frightened? Was she heartbroken? Was she angry? She went and told Peter, and another disciple many think was John, that someone had removed Jesus’ body. Peter and John ran as fast as they could to see for themselves. John got there first, and looked in. Peter arrived, and he went in. Peter was the first to see the linen wrappings that had been used as a shroud, lying there, no longer covering Jesus. John found the courage to go in, and when he saw the empty tomb, he believed. Having run to the tomb, and after finding it empty, Peter and John didn’t know what else to do, so they went home again. But Mary stayed. And when she took her turn looking into the tomb, she saw two angels, sitting where Jesus had been place. They asked her why she was weeping, and she told them, that someone had taken Jesus away, and she did not know where he was. And in that moment of confession, in that split second of saying she did not know where he had been laid, he appeared. Not recognizing him, she mistook him for the caretaker of the tombs. In their brief exchange, Mary recognizes Jesus when he speaks her name. Of all the disciples, of all those whom he loved, Jesus chose to reveal his resurrected self first to Mary Magdalene. Not Peter, not John, not Martha or Lazarus, but Mary. The one who came to the tomb for comfort, the one who stayed around long enough to meet Jesus. Mary didn’t just peer into the empty tomb and go home. She stayed, in the midst of her mourning, in the midst of her sadness, in the midst of her fears, she stayed. What courage, what faith. What strength and conviction. And because Mary had remained, Jesus trusted her to share the news with the others. It was left to Mary to go back to the disciples, and tell them the truth about Jesus: that he lives. That death could not contain him. If you had to pick one of the characters from this story, who do you think you would be? John? Peter? Mary? John heard that Jesus was gone, and he ran as fast as he could to get to the tomb. He even outran Peter. But when he got there, his courage failed and he didn’t go in. Peter wasn’t as fast as John, but when he did arrive at the tomb, he had the courage to go in and see for himself what had happened. Mary was there first, saw that the stone had been rolled away, and was the first to tell the disciples that something wasn’t right. Mary was the first to see Jesus, to recognize him, and was the first to tell the others that Jesus had risen. Speedy, but fearful, like John, slower, but with more courage, like Peter or present to receive the newly risen Christ in the midst of deep sadness and fear, like Mary… Each of us must peer into the empty tombs of our lives from time to time. We all have dark and empty places, where something important used to be. Sometimes we get there in a hurry, but we don’t want to look in. Sometimes we finally get there, and take a deep breath and look in. Rarely, are we waiting outside that empty tomb, and rarely, because we are in the right place at the right time, do we meet Jesus there. Empty tombs. What empty tombs? A lost job. A lost relationship. A death of a loved one. An addiction. An illness. Maybe even an empty church sanctuary. The list goes on, and each one of us has countless empty tombs littering our horizon. And if we are honest, if we take a sober look at the way we encounter our empty tombs, we’d probably have to say that we’re more like John or Peter in the way we treat them: we look in briefly, maybe receive some insight, and go home. This is where the cycle of death and rebirth, of crucifixion and resurrection can be found in our lives. It’s hard to find the courage or the strength to hang around such a vivid and painful reminder of loss as an empty tomb. But with our gospel lesson this morning, we now know that if we wait outside the empty tomb, facing our fears, peering into the unknown, like Mary did, the truth will appear to us. We might not recognize it at first. We might think the truth is something else, but being in the right place at the right time isn’t just dumb luck, it’s sometimes just sheer perseverance! The disciples didn’t know what else to do. It didn’t make sense to just hang around the tomb, much less an empty one. That seems like most of us: who wants to hang around an empty tomb, being reminded of all that pain and suffering? The loss, the emptiness? Nobody I know. But when we can, and when we do, the reward is nothing less than a miracle: facing our fears, confronting our worries and anxieties, we can know the truth: all is not lost. Because Jesus lives, we live also. Because Jesus triumphed over death, our sins are forgiven. Our fears relieved. Our faults and shortcomings accepted without judgment. The message Jesus gave Mary was profound. And it has profound implications for the way we live our lives: Jesus told Mary not to cling to the ‘old’ Jesus, the old ways. That with his ascension to be with God, he was a ‘new’ Jesus. But oh how we love to cling to the old ways! Even in the face of evidence that God does new things, in new ways, every day, aren’t we mostly convinced in some way or another that the old ways are the best ways? It’s human nature. We cling to the old Jesus as if that’s the only Jesus there is. We try and keep him close to us for comfort, but the truth is that he will have to ascend to heaven sometime, and clinging to the old Jesus won’t bring us any relief from our fears and worries. So while many of us would have to confess a similarity to John or Peter when it comes to peering into the empty tombs of our lives, many of us are just like Mary when it comes to clinging to the old Jesus, the one who walked with us before his ascension. The message for Mary was clear: don’t cling to the Jesus you knew before, and go and tell the others what you now know. And that message is for us, here, today: The Easter message of hope, of rebirth and new life resides in the new Christ, the newly risen Christ, not the old Jesus. The Easter message of new life resides in the new Christ, the newly risen Christ, not the old Jesus. The powerful Easter message of forgiveness resides in the new Christ, the newly risen Christ, not the old Jesus. This is not easy to understand: if we have enough courage to hang around the empty tombs of our lives long enough to meet Jesus, the message we get is difficult to follow: don’t cling to the old ways, it’s the newly resurrected Jesus that we must follow, the new way, the new life, the new covenant. God is creating new ways for us to worship, new ways to celebrate, new ways to care for and love our neighbors, and honor the risen Christ: we must not cling to the old Jesus, or the old ways if we wish to move on, or even live on. Whether we know it or not, we all have many empty tombs in our lives. I would hope that we could each look at one today, or maybe this week. Look into one empty tomb that has been bothering us, one empty tomb where we buried something important that has died, and wait around it long enough to encounter Jesus. Even if he doesn’t tap us on the shoulder, we know the message he’ll give us: don’t cling to the old understanding, living the new life means letting go, letting go of the old grudge, letting go of the past hurts, or the gnawing fears, or the crippling anxiety. Mary had it right. Peter and John had to wait just a little longer before Jesus came to them in person. But ultimately, he came to them, just like the others, just like he’ll come to us, too. And his message will be the same: look to live in the new life, look to live in the new covenant, look to honor the risen Christ, not by clinging to the Jesus who lived among us, but by obeying the one who triumphed over death, who secured our forgiveness by sacrificing his life for us. Hope, new life in Christ, forgiveness. Easter gifts for us, and all the Easter people. Thanks be to God. Amen. |
WatchClick here to watch our scripture and sermons playlist on YouTube. (link opens in a new window)
Archives
July 2023
Categories
All
|