Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
© Alison J. Buttrick Patton
April 12, 2015
Scripture: John 20:19-31
Easter Sunday has come and gone. The bulbs along my morning walk still haven’t managed to bloom, and the air remains chilly. Whether or not we took time off to celebrate with family or friends last Sunday, the work load was still waiting for us on Monday morning, along with the most desperate kinds of headlines – mostly having to do with guns and untimely loss of life. It’s enough to leave one asking, where is Easter now?
According to the church calendar, Easter isn’t a day, it’s a season – 50 days during which we are called to sing alleluias and marvel at the wonder of the risen Christ. And according to the gospel, Easter is supposed to be a way of life; a whole new reality; in the words of one of Heather’s favorite Easter songs: “Every morning is Easter morning from now. Every day’s resurrection day; the past is over and gone.”
And yet: on Monday we were confronted by images of 147 students shot dead in a Kenyan university over the weekend.
On Wednesday, we saw the video of a police officer shooting Walter Scott in the back as he ran away. Walter died of 5 gunshot wounds.
On Thursday, tornadoes ripped through Illinois, wiping out whole towns.
On Saturday, I read about the thousands of Central American asylum seekers – mostly women and children – who are currently being held in United States detention centers.
And that’s just the stuff I pulled from my news feed. There are also those relationships we have, which are still broken; the aches and pains that we still suffer, the jobs that remain elusive, deficits that persist, the promise of renewed life that still seems just out of reach.
It may be joyful to contemplate the story of the resurrection for one day; to let “Christ is risen!” escape our lips, maybe even to believe it, while engulfed by the heady aroma of lilies and the exuberant strains of the Hallelujah Chorus. But how do we sustain that joy, in the cold light of Monday morning, when we realize that pain and suffering persist in the world? Where is the Good News for the Scott family in North Charleston? For whole communities in Eastern Kenya? Or for those Central American mothers and children who fled terrible violence in their home countries, only to be incarcerated on US soil? The world is still a heart-wrenching, death-dealing place. We are not yet free of sin. It might just be safest to run away and hide.
Last week, I preached about the temptation to remain in the tomb. This week, it turns out that’s just what the disciples did: remained hidden in the dark – although their tomb was a locked room, a room in which they intended to hide from Jewish authorities who might subject them to the same fate as their teacher Jesus; a room in which they tried to hide from their own shame at having deserted him at the end.
Have you ever failed to live up to your own best intentions, your own image of your best self? Have you ever looked back and winced in the wake of your own failure to be as brave or kind or convicted as you thought you were? Then you can imagine how those disciples felt, as they cowered behind locked doors, fear, disappointment and shame their only companions. For them, Easter hadn’t happened yet. They hadn’t gotten the message. Mary had tried to tell them, but they refused to believe her. It seems Thomas wasn’t the only one who needed visible proof.
Then Jesus showed up, got past the locked door, past all their defenses. I wonder whether Mary there, to say, “I told you so?” Jesus, it seems, resisted that temptation. Instead he said this: “Peace be with you.” Peace be with you. And at first, one might assume he meant something like, “Relax. Everything’s going to be fine now. I’m back.” Only then he said something else: “As the Father sent me, so I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit.” And he blew. Imagine opening a window in a stuffy room; imagine that cool draft on flushed cheeks; or imagine the warm breath of someone you love leaning in close … Jesus breathed on them, and his greeting took on a whole new meaning. “Peace be with you,” suddenly sounded less like, “Relax!” and more like, “What are you waiting for? … What are you waiting for, here in this dark paneled room? Didn’t Mary tell you? Didn’t I tell you myself? Haven’t I been telling you all along? I belong to life, not to death, and so do you! What are you waiting for? Receive the Holy Spirit, and go. You can’t stay here.”
This encounter is not exactly comforting, if comforting is the promise that we are absolved of any responsibility; that the problems have been taken care of; that we will be free of pain and trouble. But Jesus never promised any of those things. On the contrary, Jesus said: “Get up. Get out. You’ve got work to do.”
Peace, as far as Jesus is concerned, is not the same as placidness. Not even close. It’s more like… clarity. As in clarity of purpose. Or trust. As in: “Trust that I am with you; trust that life and love prevail; trust – and spread the news.” Jesus shows up, not to coddle but to commission the disciples, to send them back out into that death-dealing world to continue what Jesus started, to practice resurrection in their own lives.
Writer Nora Gallagher has a memoir titled Practicing Resurrection. In it, she describes going to a local monastery during the Easter season, to worship with the monks.
“I listened as the monks prayed for an end to the death penalty and for the inmates [one monk] visited in prison and for peace in the Middle East. Sometimes the prayers seemed foolish to me, naïve in the face of so much…but at other times those same prayers felt like the witness of men courageous enough to be foolish and hopeful…And I saw that they too suffered, that one of them suffered from depression…that several were recovering alcoholics, that old age was limiting another’s ability to garden and hike. One afternoon I told [my husband] Vincent about visiting there…and he said softly, ‘I think they are men who do not expect their faith to end their own suffering.’”[1]
Men who do not expect their faith to end their suffering. Ah! People who know how to practice resurrection: how to live in hope, even in the face of despair, people who do not hide in locked rooms, but willingly face into the turmoil in our world, trusting that God can transform it (and us!). This is the charge put to all of us, I think. Not just to proclaim, “Christ is risen,” in our sunlit sanctuary, while the children laugh and the flowers bloom, but to proclaim it everywhere we go, to carry the resurrection with us, not merely to contemplate the Peace of Christ, but to spread it.
Which means what, exactly? Well, it doesn’t mean retreating behind locked doors. Locks are no problem for Jesus, but they are a problem for us; we want them to keep us safe, but they have a way of keeping us afraid. It took a couple tries for the disciples to figure this out. Did you notice? Jesus came and went. Thomas missed it, so the disciples reported what had happened. And Thomas said, in effect, “Yeah, right.” Was it Jesus he doubted? Or the disciples themselves? The disciples: who responded to Christ’s appearance by going right back inside and sealing the door? In the words of the Rev. Robb McCoy:
“Thomas doubted those that gave witness to the risen Christ, perhaps because they showed no evidence. Even after encountering the risen Christ, they were locking themselves in a room. Is there any wonder that he didn’t believe them?”[2]
The peace of Christ, holy breath in our faces, visions of impossible new life – shouldn’t those things change us? Shouldn’t they show up somehow, in our lives, on our faces, so that strangers stop and stare, and neighbors wonder: “Have you done something different with your hair? Are those new glasses? Are you glowing? Why are you so…hopeful?”
Thomas didn’t see the evidence in his fellow followers, not at first. So he remained skeptical. For that, Thomas gets a bad rap, but I don’t think he deserves it. Yes, he struggled to believe, just like all the others, but in the end, it was Thomas who asked the questions, Thomas who yearned to see, Thomas who cried out, “My Lord and My God!” Not just, “Jesus!” But “My God!” It was Thomas who connected all the dots, saw Holy Mystery, Divine presence in the risen Christ, saw and marveled. It was Thomas who realized in a flash that the world was much bigger than one locked room. Thomas whose worldview suddenly expanded to include the astonishing, impossible possibility that God really is in charge and death really can be overcome. I can only imagine that the wonder of it showed on his face, and in his life, from that day forward.
Here’s what it looks like, to practice resurrection. It looks like Nora Gallagher’s monks, who earnestly prayed for the most desperate situations, as though it could absolutely make a difference. It looks like Thomas, who allowed Jesus to expand his vision, and who left that day with wonder and hope written all over his face. It looks like walking out the door and confronting the world’s pain with newfound courage. It looks like not giving up, not despairing, not ignoring the headlines, or running from them. Instead, it looks like speaking up, acting out, mustering all our Holy Spirit power to say: We believe that something else is possible, something better, healing, holy.
“When I think about the resurrection now, [writes Nora Gallagher] I don’t only think about what happened to Jesus. I think about what happened to his disciples. Something happened to them, too. They went into hiding after the crucifixion but after the resurrection appearances, they walked back out into the world. They became braver and stronger; they visited strangers, and healed the sick. As Nicholas Peter Harvey has pointed out in Death’s Gift, it was not only what they saw when they saw Jesus, or how they saw it, but what was set free in them.”[3]
May we all be set free this season: free to envision new life for all God’s people, and then, with the help of the Holy Spirit, tenaciously, persistently, joyfully, faithfully to pursue it.
Scripture
John 20:19-31 – NRSV Translation
19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
26A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” 30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
[1] Practicing Resurrection by Nora Gallagher, p. 172-3.
[2] http://www.pulpitfiction.us/show-notes/110-easter-2b-april-12-2015
[3] Practicing Resurrection, Nora Gallagher, p. 206.