OPPORTUNITIES

May 1, 2011
Easter 2
Psalm 16
John 20:19-31

(prayer)

Happy Easter!

No, I didn’t look incorrectly at the Calendar. And no, it is not Orthodox Easter on the Julian calendar (2011 was one of those rare years when both the eastern and western church shared the same day for Easter Sunday).

I say Happy Easter because Easter is more than one day in the church – it is a whole season – a seven week season in fact. If you have one of those Canadian Church Calendars that our women’s group sells in December, you will see that every date in May is coloured white – in fact it is white from April 24th all the way to June 11th. Easter is a 49 day season that runs from Easter Sunday to the day before Pentecost.

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Over these next few weeks, I hope that our times together in worship can build on the big theme of Easter: that is...

• With God all things are possible.

• Trouble and difficulty do not have to be the final word.

• Out of despair, joy can rise.

• Jesus can still be known and experienced – resurrection gives us that opportunity.

All of these things are not statements of unequivocal fact for us (none of us was there at the empty tomb or in the upper room; none of us broke bread with Jesus in Emmaus or ate breakfast fish with him by the shores of Galilee) – these Easter themes are not statements of unequivocal facts, but are declarations of faith. And yet, they may not be based on blind faith – for us, there may just be a logic behind what we have come to believe. [more on that later]

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Our reading from the gospel of John begins on Easter Sunday evening. If you were at the 8am service last week, you would have heard the first 18 verses of John, chapter 20.

As we heard this morning, the context of verse 19 is that Sunday evening has come; the followers of Jesus are huddled behind locked doors in their rented room. They were afraid that the temple guards that had come and arrested Jesus 3 days earlier would be coming for them as well.

[ASIDE: Sadly, the gospel of John has been used by Christians for centuries to justify anti-Semitism. This is because of the authors labelling of the opponents of Jesus in Jerusalem simply as “The Jews”. An uninformed reading of these texts (like John 20:19) might assume that all Jews were to be feared by the followers of Jesus. That is of course absurd because the followers of Jesus were, themselves, Jews. Jesus was a Jew. Clearly the reference in John 20:19 is to be understood to mean that the disciples were behind locked doors for fear of the Jewish authorities: the members of the Temple hierarchy that saw Jesus as having committed blasphemy: the ones who took Jesus to the roman governor, Pilate, who then sentenced Jesus to death for treason against the empire (claims to kingship). Now, John’s gospel is generally agreed to be the last of the Biblical gospels to be written – perhaps as late as the 90s of the first century – that’s sixty some years after the events they describe. John’s text is not simply an historical record – it is a theological record. It not only includes accounts about some of the things that Jesus said and did, but (also) those stories are interwoven with 60 years of theological and Christological development: what was believed about God and Jesus. For example, in John 8:12 when Jesus is quoted as saying “I Am the light of the world” or in 6:35 when he says “I Am the bread of life” or in 14:6 where we read “I Am the way, the truth and the life”, these are more than historical quotes, they are statements of faith from the late first century Christian movement: John’s church was proclaiming that (for them) Jesus is (like) Light [guide, warmth, comfort], Bread [nourishment], Jesus is the Way, Truth and Life [a sure connection to God].” These sayings had become true for the church of the 90s. Back on topic about anti-Semitism, another truth for the Christian church of the 90s, is that they were no longer a strictly Hebrew movement – over the decades they had evolved to recognise that the love of God, in Christ Jesus their lord, was not restricted to one group or another – Christianity may have begun as new kind of Hebrew sect, but as it grew, it no longer fit neatly within traditional Judaism: in the language of the Apostle Paul “in Christ there was no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female” – all of these types of people still co-existed in the church, it’s just that divisive labels didn’t matter. However, within just one generation or so after the first Easter, even the groups of largely Jewish Christians in Judah and Galilee, found that they no longer had a place in the synagogues. And so we can understand how, to a Christian of the late first century, ‘The Jews’ were seen as separate from ‘The Christians’. Some of them in the 1st century may have even been comfortable extrapolating the historic opposition to Jesus from the temple elite to the entire Jewish nation (we saw the Nazis of the early 20th century make the same extrapolation) – but that is not something that is historically accurate, and it is certainly not helpful for us in a diversely spiritual world of the 21st century: where we have seen far too many examples of how fundamentalist religious zeal feeds on the hate that brews within holy divisions. And so, back to the text, a fair and right interpretation of references to “The Jews” in the gospel of John is to see them as limited to “the Jerusalem Temple Authorities”: not every Jewish person of Jesus’ day and NO Jewish person in our day!]

Now where was I?

Yes, in the locked room on the first Easter eve. The tomb was discovered empty in the morning by Mary Magdalene – that fact was confirmed by Peter and another disciple who went and inspected the site themselves (the testimony of two reliable male witnesses would even stand up in a first century court). An empty tomb was not a sign of resurrection; it was a sign of vandalism – Mary and her male companions all assumed that someone had taken the body away: not that Jesus was risen.

When Mary later came running back saying that she had seen and talked with a risen Jesus, this news caused more confusion that it did celebration. It was just Mary; this time there were no other witnesses. This insignificant testimony by a woman experiencing deep grief was not enough to overcome the fear they felt.

You-all heard what happened next. Somehow Jesus slipped past the locked door and was seen and heard by the group of followers in the room: his message “Peace be with you. You are enlivened by the Holy Spirit and sent out by God to share the good news of God’s forgiveness.”

The disciple known as The Twin was not there when Jesus’ came. Even though there were lots of witness this time, Thomas was as sceptical about the words “We have seen the lord” as he was when Mary spoke them a few hours earlier. “Unless I see and touch for myself, I will not believe.”

On the first week anniversary of the resurrection, the disciples (including Thomas this time) are together again – still behind locked doors / still afraid? – Jesus comes again, especially for Thomas – “Peace be with you. Touch and see.”

As with all of the gospel of John, these words are not merely an attempt at passing on historical quotations – they are theological statements for the church of the late first century.

We might be right to assume that there was virtually no one alive in John’s church that ever meet Jesus in the flesh (during his lifetime or a resurrection appearance) – John 20:29 is not really words for Thomas but for the church (the church of the late 1st century right up to our day):

“Blessed are those who have not seen

and yet have come to believe.”



These are not words that speak of so-called blind faith (see, I said, I’d come back to this). It does not say ‘blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe’; it says, ‘blessed are those who have not seen and yet HAVE COME TO believe’.

Faith is not a destination that we instantly transport to (we can’t ask Scotty to just beam us there); faith grows and develops along the way. I would even go so far to say ... that faith is dependent on the opportunities and experiences that come our way. A message from our gospel today is that just because one of those opportunities does not include viewing crucifixion wounds up close, doesn’t mean that faith is impossible. There are still paths that can get us there. We can still ‘come to believe’.

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So, for us now – May Day 2011 – what opportunities and experiences might be in front of us that can strengthen our connection to the mystery and holiness we hope is all around us?

What opportunities and experiences might be in front of us that can strengthen our connection to the mystery and holiness we hope is all around us?

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I feel a bit lonely up here this morning. I feel blessed to have been able to walk with Alex as she was here from September to April as a student minister.

I know that this internship experience was only 8 months long. That’s only 6% of my time as minister at St. David’s (127 months since Oct 2000) and 3% of the time I have been an ordained UC minister (251 months since June 1990) and less than one half of a percent in lifespan of this congregation’s history (since 1989).

I know that this experience was only eight months long and that the absolute primary focus of that time had to be on Alex’s learning, but I have found myself this week reflecting on how that time was an opportunity for me to learn and grow in faith. And, oddly enough, I am not lamenting what is no longer here because the internship is concluded, but I am grateful for what I have gained: I have been thinking about how that has been true for me personally and how I imagine it to be true for our church as a whole.

I wonder where we go from here.

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“I wonder where we go from here”: it’s a great question. And it’s a hard question. I know that if we gathered a half dozen people together from this room right now, we would likely have a variety of ideas of what might be desired – I doubt we would have an instant consensus of what might be necessary and possible. “I wonder where we go from here” is the start of a deep conversation.

I know I have mentioned this before, but I’m going to again: when my wife Patti and I brought our first son home from the hospital and put his delicate, sleepy body in his crib for the first time, we looked at each other and both wondered: “so, now what?”

I imagine that Mary and Peter and Thomas may have looked at each other after Jesus left that locked room and wondered the same thing: so, now what?

Jesus had said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Did the disciples stare into each other’s eyes and say, “I wonder where we go from here.”

Well, we know what their first step had to be. If they were truly to take the notion of ‘being sent’ seriously, they would have to leave the security of the locked room – they would have to set aside the paralysing fear and venture out in hope and faith, trusting (as Jesus said) they had the Holy Spirit as a companion.

In spite of what we might assume about today’s story concerning Thomas, throughout the gospels and other parts of the Bible, the biggest obstacle to faith is not doubt, but fear.

“You of little faith, why are you afraid?” Jesus once told them in the boat during a storm (Mt 8:26).

The path of faith begins by moving away from fear! That message comes out clearly in the last half of John, chapter 20.

Jesus gave his disciples an indwelling of the Holy Spirit to be their companion along the way. This was not necessarily new: ancient Psalmists (like the author of Psalm 16, which was read this morning) fervently believed that God was “spiritual companion”: In you, I take refuge ... you show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. (Ps 16:1,11). On that night in the locked room, Jesus reminded his followers that they have what their tradition has always believed –

 

They enjoyed an indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit. And so, maybe they didn’t need to always be afraid. They didn’t need to take refuge in a locked room ... God is their refuge.

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Of course, fear pops up here and there along the way – often for good reason – because fear is tied to uncertainty, and there is a lot of uncertainty in life and in the world in which we live. We worry about the impact of choices we make – we wonder about what joy/calamity an uncertain future might bring.

[Uncertain future ... now, I’m not really speaking about the election tomorrow, but since I brought it up – I do encourage those of you citizens 18 and older to be sure to take your whole self into the voting booth: mind, body and spirit. In faith, believe that you have received the Holy Spirit and that this blessing influences how you look at the world. So citizen, be guided by your morals, your sense of justice and a desire (as Paul wrote in a letter to the Corinthians) for the ‘common good’ for yourself and your fellow Canadians. That’s all I’ll say about that for fear of breaching the non-partisan expectations of religious charitable organizations.]

But I digress... where was I?

Oh, yes, ‘moving beyond fear’.

For faith to be grown – to be able to ‘come to believe’, we need to journey into the opportunities and experiences where we might discover the Holy.

That practically demands that we wonder where we should be going from here.

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Be thinking about that,

meditate on that,

pray about that,

be open to acting on what you discover.

To do anything else is akin to hiding a stagnant faith behind a locked door.

“Blessed are those who come to believe.”

Thanks be to God. [END]

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Let us pray:

Holy Spirit,

may we embody your grace and carry that good news to a waiting world.

AMEN.





Page 806VU “O God, Our Help In Ages Past”