2nd Sunday of
Easter (Year B) – Sunday, April 15, 2012
Christ Evangelical
Lutheran Church, Lancaster, PA
Texts: Acts 4:32-35; Psalm
133; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31
If you're a baseball fan, you know what I mean when I
say “hope springs eternal on opening day.” From what I gather,
here in Lancaster we're still on the Phillies side of the
Pennsylvania sports divide...I've seen more Orioles than Pirates fans
in my time here. If you are indeed one of those Phillies Phanatics
(with a “PH”), you've had a team that for the last several
seasons has been easy to believe in. My time here in Pennsylvania
has coincided with the recent “golden age” for the Phillies and I
have been blown away by the fan support here. I have never, ever,
seen more devoted fans to any team in any sport, anywhere. With
three or four aces, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, you can
afford to believe. That's what hope is, after all, it's belief that
something good is coming for you down the road. But if you are
indeed a true Phillies fan, if you invested your belief and your
hopes with the team, you know how it felt to have your hopes crushed
with an devastatingly early, Game 5 departure from the playoffs in
the first round at the hands of that team from St. Louis that I'm
sure is not mentioned in South Philly to this day.
Belief
requires vulnerability, investment, and risk. It means staking your
wellbeing and resources and maybe even your future with the person or
movement or even a team you are believing in. The disciples of Jesus
had staked everything on their rabbi from Nazareth. I must imagine
that with every miracle and healing, every new promise fulfilled,
with a man, Lazarus, raised from the dead, their hopes, their beliefs
got bigger, deeper, more invested...and more risky. And so when
these disciples had to witness their Lord betrayed, tried, and
beaten, when they had to watch the nails being driven through his
hands and feet and the spear into his side, when they heard him
breathe his last, I can only begin to imagine the feeling of utter
disappointment, loss, and fear for their own future. Would their
fate be any different?
And so
it isn't hard to conceive that even after hearing from Peter and the
beloved disciple about the empty tomb, and Mary Magdalene's joyous
announcement that she had seen her Lord, that on that evening of the
day of resurrection the disciples locked themselves up in their
meeting room for fear of those who had crucified Jesus. But they
also had to just have been devastated. Dejected. Hopes crushed.
Full of doubts, and questions, about what whether their Lord, their
Teacher, Jesus, was really who he said he was, the good shepherd, the
way, the truth and the life, one with the Father.
You
who have for decades entrusted your hopes and dreams to Christ
Lutheran Church, you who have believed in this congregation, only to
see members leave and budgets dwindle, have you huddled in the upper
room and locked the doors? You who have placed your hopes in a
marriage or relationship, or a child, only to see that hope slip
away, have you locked up your heart inside yourself? You who have
believed in a treatment only to receive the dreaded test result, you
who have trusted that a new job would work out only to be laid off,
have you locked the doors around yourself, afraid of believing in
anything, or anyone, again?
No one
expected Jesus to come back from the dead. No one greeted the risen
Christ with “oh, we were waiting for you to show up.” It took an
experience of their risen Lord Jesus Christ for the disciples to
believe again. Jesus didn't wait for them to have a change of heart,
or for them to make a decision based on what they'd been told. Jesus
just went to his disciples, his children, through their locked doors
so that he could unlock their hearts to glorious reality that he was
and is risen from the dead. Jesus came and stood among them and
said, “Peace be with you.” You may have peace in your hearts
again. I am here. Sin and death have not had the final word – my
Father has raised me, your Father has won the victory.
The
disciples, of course, rejoiced. Jesus said again, “Peace be with
you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” You are my
presence in the world now, and so you need my Spirit, the Spirit that
my Father and I have in common, the Holy Spirit. Our translation
says, “he breathed on them,” but the Greek word here is the same
as in the creation story in Genesis, when the LORD God breathed into
the human being the breath of life. Christ breathed the Holy Spirit
into the disciples in the room, and commissioned them to be his Body
in the world. They were sent to be his embodied presence to those
whose hearts were locked up by fear and despair.
Thomas,
of course, needs only what his fellows needed. His heart must be
unlocked, just as theirs was, by an encounter with the living God.
Thomas is a true disciple – earlier in the gospel, he was the one
who said, “let us go also” with him to Judea, “that we may die
with him.” He had been ready to die alongside Jesus. His true
hope and belief in Jesus made the cross of Christ that much harder to
bear. And so when Thomas can see and touch and hear and smell Christ
right in front of him, when his hopes and beliefs are finally
vindicated by God, he gives the most profound statement of faith in
the whole gospel, “my Lord AND MY GOD.” Thomas is the one who
makes the connection – Jesus Christ is Lord, and he is also God.
Like
Thomas, we weren't there that first night of the day of resurrection.
The risen Christ hasn't walked up to us giving us peace and
breathing into us the Holy Spirit. Yet somehow we believe. Somehow
faith has been granted to us. If we were watching a movie of John's
gospel, if it were done right, we'd notice times when Jesus is
talking to someone but that person just seems to fade into the
background, and Jesus turns to face the camera. What he says next is
then for us. This is one of those times. Friends, Jesus is facing
you right now and he's saying, “blessed are you who have not seen
and yet have come to believe.” Jesus is speaking to us, who didn't
have that chance to see him face to face, to tell us that our
encounters with him are just as valid as those of Thomas and the
disciples. In fact, John tells us that this encounter with Christ is
the whole purpose of his gospel – that he wrote this “so that you
may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and
that believing you may have life in his name.”
We
desperately need to feel the marks in his hands and side too. With
the crosses that come in our lives, we can't unlock our own hearts.
We can't come to faith on our own. Christ breaks into our locked
rooms and unlocks our boarded-up hearts through an encounter with his
living Word that is contained in these scriptures, through his living
water that gives us new life, through his very body and blood that we
take into ourselves so that we may become that very Body of Christ in
the world.
I am
going to go out on a limb and say that each and every one of you have
had some experience of the risen Christ in your life – something
you could see, hear, smell, taste and touch – that has enabled you
to come to believe. We do not believe because of an argument, or a
threat, such as those commonly peddled by Christians, like “believe
or burn.” No, belief in the real, risen Christ in this broken
world requires a close encounter with the embodied presence of God.
What did John's community say in their letter we heard today? “We
declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what
we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with
our hands...” Where have you felt the marks in his hands and his
side? Where have you seen God? You might have noticed that now
there's a bulletin board out in the narthex where you can post
stories or pictures or just scribble a little note about where you
have seen God. You can email me stuff too and I'll post it on the
sermon blog. Keep a close eye, because I'm liable to tell you where
I've been stopped in my tracks by the living God.
As we
who hope to reach out to those around us who have not seen, and
cannot believe in the risen Christ (the ones we hope will start
coming to our church), we must tell of what we have heard, and seen
with our eyes, and looked at and touched with our hands, concerning
the word of life. But we're called to even more than that. As
Christ breathes the Spirit into us, so we are called to be his
embodied presence for these others we hope will believe. If we need
that encounter, they have to have it too. So, my friends, we are
called to BE the Body of Christ, to BE the marks in his hands and
side. We are called to embody the resurrection in all that we do.
As in today's psalm, we're called to BE kindred living together in
unity. As in the early church described in the lesson from Acts,
we're called BE of one heart and soul, giving ourselves to each
other, so that we might give ourselves to the world in need. We have
the privilege, and the commission, to so live so that those who do
not know Christ, come to know Christ, because they know us. We are
called to unlock those doors, to be a people of welcome, to BE the
refuge in our neighborhood, to BE the people and the place where
others come to know the peace of God. What a privilege, what a
calling, how exciting it is! Amen.
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