April 15, 2012
Easter 2
John 20:19-31
Acts 4:32-35
1st John 1:1-9
(prayer)
Today we are one week into the 2012 Easter season. Although much of the world around us has moved on from the Day of Resurrection whether that was the discovery of an empty tomb or chocolate bunnies behind the couch, we in the church know that there is much more to explore about the impact of our highest festival and what it means to be followers of the ‘risen’ Christ.
In the cycle of the church year, Easter is a seven week season. It parallels the fifty day interval between the Jewish festivals of the Passover and the Feast of Weeks (aka Pentecost).
And so, over these weeks, we will take time to hear and experience some of the stories of the Risen Christ being experienced and known in the lives of Jesus' closest followers and what that meant for how they lived in the days, weeks, months and years that followed.
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The resurrection story that is often told on this Sunday (one week after Easter) is the one I shared with the children earlier.
John’s gospel gives us this narrative…
Mary Magdalene discovers that the tomb of Jesus is empty – a fact confirmed by two male witnesness (Peter and another disciple) which means, even in the staunchly patriarchal society of the day, it could be accepted as a fact. Jesus body was gone.
Then after the men leave, Mary sees Jesus in the garden of her tears. He calls her by name and tells her to spread the good news that she has experienced.
She runs into where the others are and announces with great joy: “I have seen the Lord!!” It seems that there was less enthusiasm to believe these words.
Then that same Sunday evening, the Risen Jesus appears again, this time to a larger group of followers – presumably the same ones Mary had run and told her idle tale to.
It seems that even the sight of Jesus was not quite conclusive enough because he showed them his crucifixion wounds. Then they could believe Mary’s words of resurrection.
Well, not all of them – Thomas was not in the room when Jesus came. He was a stubborn of the others and would not take the good news on word alone.
John’s gospel tells us that Jesus repeated the visit - one week later - and gave the one they called “The Twin” the same perspective as the others.
This whole story leads into John’s main point to his readers: this book has been written so that [by reading it] people may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.
It was a blessing for those few who were privileged to be eye witnesses to resurrection, but it is even a greater blessing to have not seen and yet have come to believe.
John was writing some sixty years after Mary came running with joy from the tomb’s garden. All his audience had were the testamonies passed on to them of those claiming to be witnesses.
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Faith (by definition) exists on a different plane than proof and fact and hard evidence. As I mentioned last week, the resurrection didn’t become real for Jesus’ closest disciples even when angelic messengers told them that Jesus was risen. It became believable when trusted friends spoke of wondrous experiences. And that only opened the door to the upper room – the grief of Jesus’ disciples was too dark a shroud over them to allow the light of new life to illuminate their hearts.
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We don’t carry the deep and honest grief over the death of Jesus like those disciples did, because even when we first heard the Good Friday tale, we were quickly told the next chapter about Easter Sunday.
So maybe, we have an advantage that Mary and Peter and Thomas did not have. We did not have our hope extinguished between Friday and Sunday.
Our spark of faith might, in fact, be easier to light than it was for poor old doubting Thomas.
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It seems that for many who had first hand Easter experiences, there was a need for it to be extremely personal. They wanted to see for themselves.
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We live in the post-corporeal church – the post-easter-jesus church, where that physical resurrection experience is relegated to stories passed on to us.
So, the nature of our faith is naturally a bit more interactive.
For modern people of faith, spiritual experiences are usually based on some level of interaction with others.
It is a widely accepted fact in ‘church growth literature’ that almost everyone first who comes to a church, comes because they were invited. Sometimes, that could be an advertisement of some type or perhaps a church’s reputation has spread a bit, but more often than not, people first enter a new church because, someone has personally invited them - maybe even brought them.
This speaks to one of the hallmarks of our ethos, as churches; we are (first and foremost) “communities” of faith - people who gather with each other because they hold something in common.
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And yet...on the other hand (or perhaps better phrased, ‘at the same time’) spirituality is intensely personal. We still carry that legacy from the risen Jesus’ first believers.
Sometimes, we speak of our relationship with Jesus as a personal one. When the lights go out and we find ourselves in solitude and there is no one to watch or judge, the true measure of our devotion can be measured.
Our faith is supposed to help develop who we are at the deepest recess of our being.
Faith is - at its most basic level – is... for me, and me alone.
The truth is that if faith doesn’t work on the level of the self, it is likely that it doesn’t work at all for us.
Now, I don’t mean that we can’t have doubts or misgivings or wonderings or uncertainly – faith has room for all of that. But that spirituality is always personal before it is communal.
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We must remember that as much as this is true, spirituality is also communal. Our scriptures show and teach us that this is the core of the wider Jesus Movement.
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As we heard from the book of the Acts of the Apostles this morning, the communal life of the individual believers was a significant characteristic of the early church. In fact, they were much more into this that we are, if we look at the passage in its most literal form: “no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common”. I suspect that most of us get a little suspicious when we hear of some group of believers that put every resource they have into a common pot. When they buy a plot of land out in the wilderness and set up a self-sustaining isolated society.
I can see how some people can extrapolate that kind of situation from passages like the one in Acts chapter four. But...as we read on in the New Testament, we can observe that communal living was not the norm for the early church, but that communal support and care and faithfulness, was.
To say that no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common does not necessarily mean that it all gets deposited in a central bank account. But it does seem to mean that there was an attitude about possession that runs counter to our modern culture.
The 24th Psalm begins: “The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it: the world, and those who live in it.”
This is a belief not a method.
If we believe there is truth in Psalm 24, we like the people of Acts 4, might be able to say that none of us really owns anything.
It is good Biblical scholarship to say that, at most, we are Stewards of that which is God’s.
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For me, though, perhaps the most important part of the Acts passage is the very first phrase we heard today: “the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul”. Money and things are not at the centre of the church, but emotional and spiritual connections – being of ‘one heart and soul’!
For the early church the sharing of resources to ensure that no one was in need, that there wasn’t a disparity among them, was simply a natural consequence of the heart and soul transformation.
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This kind of faith leads to sharing – it just does. It leads to generosity... and openness... and true and non-judgemental welcome.
And so we are not stingy with what gives us joy. We are sharers of the good news we have taken in.
As a late first century evangelist wrote (in the letter of First John) “we declare to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us”.
Our joy is made even more complete when that joy is not hoarded. The author of the letter used the tried and true biblical metaphor of light and darkness to emphasis this point.
God is light - in that, with God, there is no need to pretend or feel like we need to hide. In the light, all can be known. It is in the darkness that hypocrisy can endure and if there was anything that got Jesus’ goat, it was hypocrisy.
Living in the light, doesn’t mean living perfectly, but it means that our imperfections and misgivings and shortcomings are are not ignored, they are 'tended to' because we care about each other’s well being.
When I hear in Acts 4 that the community worked together to support those in need, I know that the reference is primarily to practical daily needs like food and shelter – but I also know that the message there is broad enough to allow for those needs to include the need for forgiveness and the opportunity to make things better for ourselves and for others.
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Jesus is my personal saviour, but my faith cannot simply be a selfish endeavour.
I thank God that I am also called into community for the well-being of my very heart and soul and for the well-being for the hearts and souls of all of God's Children.
**prayer**
Let us pray:
God, help us to understand and experience the resurrection of Jesus as a welcome to all of us into true community where all are excepted and offered a home. May we rejoice in that great gift. Amen.
#185VU “You Tell Me That the Lord is Risen”
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