Doubting Thomas?

Sermon for Easter 2B- RCL

Acts 4:32-35

Psalm 133

1 John 1:1-2:2

When 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." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So 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."

A 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." Then 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." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But 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.

Alleluia Christ is Risen!

Happy Easter!  Easter is not a day but a season.  A season that lasts 50 days.  This year for me there it is a season of anticipation and planning as well.  At the end of the Easter season on May 23^rd, God willing and the people consenting, I will be ordained a priest here in this place.  On Friday I picked up the red set that I will be vested in which belonged to my God Father – the Rev. Wallace Christopher Sprague.  I also sent the file for the invitations to the printers.  And I met with the Bishop to talk about my ordination and what I am doing to prepare.  It is all becoming real.  And perhaps a little scary as well.   A calling that I have felt for many years and have been encouraged to take on by many of you as well is coming to fruition.  Perhaps Thomas is a good place to enter into new things!  

Poor Thomas always gets the bad wrap.  We like to call him doubting Thomas.  There are other monikers that would work equally as well.  How about rational Thomas?  Or scientific method Thomas?  Or perhaps plain ol’ simple Thomas the human.  Because Thomas is just like the rest of us.  Thomas is just like the other disciples locked in the empty room.  They did not believe Mary when she told them that Jesus had risen. They did not understand the empty tomb any more than we do.  Jesus’ inner circle of followers were not following directions but cowering in a locked room for fear that those who advocated for Jesus’ execution had another cross with their names on it – or some other dreadful style of Roman execution. They where in shock.  And why not.  Their entire world had been turned upside down. 

So Jesus does what he asks us to do.  He shows up.  He offers them peace and comfort.  "Peace be with you."  Jesus knows that his followers needed some proof that what he taught was true.  That when the authorities hung Love on the cross they did not kill that love but made it stronger.  And now Jesus asks his disciples once more to go out and spread that love.  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you."

Unfortunately for Thomas he is not it the room.  Thomas wants no more than what the other guys got.  Just like us.  We want what the other person gets.  We get jealous of other peoples gifts and don’t see our own sometimes.  Lucky for Thomas Jesus shows up a second time.  Thomas gets his proof.  But Jesus also says that others will come to believe that have not seen with their own eyes the crucified and risen Christ.  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."  

So how are we to get the reassurance the Thomas asked for?  Each and everyone of us deep in our hearts have asked the same questions.  If God exists then why… fill in the blank.  For me – the scientist – I like proof.  I am trained in the scientific method and the use of statistical hypothesis testing to prove theories.  And I get the proof of God’s love all the time around here.   

When I have had doubts that I am doing the right thing God sends proof.  When I looked and saw that we were feeding the hungry on Maundy Thursday and washing their feet I saw proof. Proof that we are commissioned by Jesus to love our neighbors.  When I sit at the bedside of someone dying – who although non-verbal, starts humming along as I sing – I see proof of God’s love.  When I see people who our society would like to go away be embraced by people in this church I see Jesus.

When I wrote my final evaluation for Clinical Pastoral Education one of the sections had me state my theological beliefs that guided my work as a Hospice Chaplain.  I said that one of my beliefs is that I can see God in the face of others.  That the light of Christ can be seen in each of us. That I take my baptismal vow to Seek and Serve Christ in all persons – and to respect the dignity of every human seriously. My group challenged me on this statement.  They thought is a nice aspiration but I couldn’t actually see the world through such lenses.  But I do.  When I am low the Holy Spirit sends the least likely people to show me Christ’s wounds.  Yesterday I gave out a sack lunch to a fellow.  He thanked me and then quietly added “My name is William.”  He might as well of said “My name is Christ”.  At that moment I did not see a hungry and homeless person standing in front of me.  I saw Christ – just a surely wounded by society as the risen Christ that appeared to Thomas was wounded.  When I see you all providing food and care to each other – and especially to those who others avoid – I see the love of Christ at work in the world. 

If we open our hearts and our eyes we can see Jesus all around us.  We can put our hands in his side.  And we can see his love.  That is all the proof that I need.  Sure – there will be moments of doubt in our lives.  Moments where we are blinded by grief or hurt. When one of our fellow inhabitants of this earth cry out for proof that there is love in this world then that is when we are called to show up.  When we are called to be Jesus’ hands, feet and heart.  That is when we are called to bind up the wounds.  That is when we are to feel the breath of Jesus blowing through us.  

Because we tend to focus on Thomas on this second Sunday of Easter we miss part of the story – there is a lot going on in this short part of the Gospel!  Jesus does not just show up to calm the fears of his followers.  In the Gospel of John he also breathes the Holy Spirit into them.  This is John’s version of Pentecost.  Jesus commissions the disciples and fills them with the Holy Spirit to go out and try to bring God’s dream of Love into the world.  And each one of us has also been filled with God’s spirit.  A spirit that calls us to love and action.  We are called on doubting Thomas Sunday to see the wounds of Christ around us.  To feel the breath of God pulsing through our bodies and to go out.  To go out of our locked rooms where we hide in fear.  To go out of this Church and to spread the Love that refuses to die.  

I invite each of us during these great 50 days of Easter to see the love that refused to die on the cross.  To feel the breath of the Christ and the Holy Spirit flowing through our lives.  To offer God’s love to those who are locked in their own rooms of fear and hurt.  To help heal the wounds of Christ that the world is still inflicting.  In short to feel the love that God has for his creation and to help spread that love.

Alleluia Christ is Risen!

Good Friday 2015 A Strange Love

Sermon for Good Friday 2015

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:16-25 or
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42
Psalm 22

Today is hard.  Today is a black day for many of us.  We can’t get the feeling that this is just wrong out of our heads.  We ask why did Jesus die – and especially die such a brutal death – the death of suffocating under his own weight on a Roman instrument of torture.  Unfortunately this is also a story that has also been used to scapegoat people.  It has been used as justification for genocide against the Jews.  The text of the gospel of John can be read to indict the Jews for Jesus crucifixion.  There are several problems with blaming the Jews.  The first is the Jews did not have the power to crucify Jesus – it was only the Roman authorities with that power.  And the Roman authorities were happy to put anyone claiming to be a messiah to the Jewish people to death.  It was a lesson that they were in control.  That no Jewish God was going to overthrow empire.  But a bigger problem is that Jesus was also a Jew.  There are no “Christians” in this story.  So really when we read any John’s Gospel that the “Jew’s cried out…” for Jesus death we really need to say that we all cried out for Jesus death. You see - Jesus was not the warrior that the people wanted to set them free.  He was a carpenter’s son going about healing people and annoying everyone in power.  And I mean everyone. 

The peace of Rome was to be kept at any cost.  The Roman authorities allowed their foreign subjects to worship their God’s as long as the piece was kept.  The occupying force was not all that benign and malleable by the subjects as this story sounds. 

Rome controlled who would be the high priest.  Rome guarded the temple to make sure that no rabble-rousers caused trouble.  Rome crucified all the messianic wannabe’s.  The inscription that pilot puts over the cross makes it clear that as far as Pilot was concerned Jesus was yet another in a long string of people who claimed to be sent to overthrow Rome.  The irony as viewed through John’s Gospel is that it is not a sarcastic claim – but the truth.

However if we focus on the mechanics and the history of oppression by both Rome and of the Gospel’s we miss the point.  The point is not betrayal and death.  The point of the passion story that we remember on Good Friday is love.  Not power.  Not some substitutionary atonement for sins.  Not the triumph of evil over good.  The story that is so easy to miss today is love. 

Like so much we read in the accounts of Jesus ministry this doesn’t makes sense.  How can it be love?  The hymn writer Samuel Crossman saw it in the 17^th century when he wrote the words to a Hymn we sang at St. Paul’s last Sunday “My song is Love Unknown.”   The first stanza speaks of the love of Christ for us:

“My song is love unknown,

My Saviour’s love to me;

Love to the loveless shown,

That they might lovely be.

O who am I,

That for my sake

My Lord should take

Frail flesh and die?”

God shows us a kind of Love that we can’t get our brains around.  And I –as the extrovert scientist who lives much of my life in my brain would suggest that the brain is the wrong place to engage in this love.  I invite each of us to move out of our brains and into our hearts to find this kind of love. A love that is unknowable but only can be felt when we let go of what we expect.

A love that I experienced the last six months as a hospice chaplain.  A love that is a gift from God.  A love that stirs my heart.   For six months or so I visited Sarah – not her real name – every two weeks.  Sarah had advanced dementia likely caused by a stroke.  For the most part she was non-verbal.  I would see her every two weeks.  She might answer a yes/no question with a verbal response or with the nod or shake of her head.  “Sarah – those are really pretty flowers” or “what a pretty balloon”– I said pointing to a table by her bed.  “Someone must really love you” to which she nodded and quietly said ‘yes’.  Or when I asked her if she would like me to sing or pray with her she would say yes or nod her head.  Otherwise all I heard was sentence fragments or whispering.  At the end of every visit I always said “Sarah – thank you for letting me visit with you today.  I really enjoyed it!”  Never expecting a response and never getting one – until my last visit.  On my last visit her eyes seemed to clear and she looked me in the eyes and said – in a quiet voice “your welcome.”  Sarah died the next day.  That “thank you” was a gift from God.  It was Love from an unexpected place. 

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 We hear this kind of love from the cross ““When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." Even in his final earthly moments Jesus reaches out in Love to his mother.  He shows a love that is unexpected.  It is countercultural.  Jesus shows us an example of love that we are invited to model – even in our darkest moments.

I have another patient  - Lisa (again not her real name) - with advanced Alzheimer’s and I see in her daughter’s the women at the foot of the cross.  They do not understand why their mother is dying from that terrible disease.  They have not even heard their mother speak more that a word in months – perhaps a year.  Just like the women who followed Jesus did not understand what was happening but they stayed with him.  I don’t know what – if anything Lisa hears or understands at this point.  But her caregiver told me that she used to sing in their church choir.  So I sing to her.  I sing hymns.  And occasionally Lisa talks to me.  She will say “Yes” and on one visit after I prayed for her she looked me in the eyes and said “Thank-you.”  The gift of music and prayer allowed me to reach someone who’s passing is already being mourned.  Lisa still – even in this advanced state – can show a love that we don’t understand.

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Could this story of Jesus’ life have ended a different way?  Why couldn’t the creator of heaven and earth reach out and smite the oppressors of God’s people?  Instead of riding in on a donkey to shouts of Hosanna – “Save us now” why didn’t Jesus come in with a supernatural army?  That is what the people expected.  After all if God can wipe out the world with a flood why can’t God’s chosen – His Son - wipe out the Roman occupation army and restore the chosen people to power?  Why? But instead we get something else.  We get Love.  Why show us love?  A strange love that is willing to die. 

If we read the Passion story along with Jesus’ great commandment perhaps we can start to understand.  Jesus told his disciples and the people that the greatest commandment was to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength. And the second is to love your neighbors as yourself.  And for a very short active ministry of about three years, as documented in the gospel stories, Jesus demonstrates that love.  He heals the untouchables of his society.  He eats with sinners.  He calls a motley group of fisherman and tax collectors to follow him.  In short Jesus does not follow the rules.  He does not wait to see what will be allowed by the occupying army or the temple priests that were approved by the occupying force.  No he heals those that have been harmed by society.  He models a love that we still find hard.

Today we would rather love the lovable.  We hold celebrities, the wealthy and the powerful in high esteem.  We create mementos with pictures of athletes on them and swoon over movie stars.  There are entire industries supporting this way of living.  Telling us that we should aspire to be like those we see on our TVs or in movies.  And we do it without even thinking.  We are no better now than the people in the passion story.  We call people who want to feed the hungry and make sure they have food, shelter and medical care socialists and communists – or worse.  Some places have even gone so far as to make it illegal to feed the hungry! 

But God’s way is different. God’s dream is that we will follow Jesus.  God’s dream is that we will work to make a world where instead of destruction there is life.  Where this strange love – a love that is willing to go to the cross – is practiced by us. 

That is what this Friday is about.  That is the “goodness” in it.  That Jesus modeled a type of love that we still have trouble emulating.  You see we have a secret.  We know that this love that is willing to die for us does not die in the end but becomes stronger.  This love defeats death.  The hymn writer ends his hymn:

Here might I stay and sing,

No story so divine;

Never was love, dear King!

Never was grief like Thine.

This is my Friend,

in Whose sweet praise

I all my days

could gladly spend.

Our invitation this day is to see the love that would not die.  A love that invites us day in and day out to spend our days loving the way Jesus loves.  To spend our days bringing God’s dream of a creation of love to fruition here – and not wait for some heavenly place. 

I know it is hard to see love in this story.  It is easy to get bogged down in the cruelty and inhumanity in the story.  But the love is there.  When we put on our corrective lenses of knowing the rest of the story it is a little easier to see.  When we practice the kind of radical love that welcomes the outcasts to dine with us we can see the love.  When we treat people we think don’t hear or see or are already dead with love it is easier to see the love in this story.  When we forgive those who have harmed us – a hard thing to do – and model the radical forgiveness that Jesus provides from the cross we can start to see the love.

As I said at the beginning this story is hard.  There are so many places that we could enter into the story that might shed light on the darkness.  Don’t try to make sense of this whole story at once.  Find a place where you can enter into the story. For me this day I am choosing to enter into the story from a place of love.