Second Sunday of Easter April 15, 2012

1 John 1:1-2:2 p. 989 1We 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, concerning the word of life—2this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us—3we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.4We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. 5This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.6If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true;7but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.9If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.10If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 2My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;2and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. This is the word of the Lord…….Thanks be to God John 20:19-31 p. 883 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. This is the Word of the Lord……..Thanks be to God If we look at the characters in the Easter story, not much has changed- It is Easter evening. And despite hearing the good news, despite seeing an empty tomb, despite the stories of the women, and Peter, and the beloved disciple, there is no change. The disciples are huddled in a room. With a locked door. In fear. Now, we often talk about Doubting Thomas. In fact, that’s how he is known. And in church traditions, this Sunday is known as Doubting Thomas Sunday. But look at the other disciples: despite seeing and hearing testimony that Jesus is alive, is resurrected, despite having heard Jesus’ himself tell them that this would happen, they doubt. And Jesus comes into the room, the locked room, where they are huddled together, full of fear. And they don’t understand, they doubt. Jesus even speaks to them, saying “peace be with you.” And they don’t say “welcome back” or “nice to see you” or even “how come it took you so long?” (David Lose, http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=577) No- It is not until Jesus shows them his scars, his hands and his side that the disciples “rejoice when the saw the Lord” And Thomas, who has been out- I always think he is the bravest of them all, out getting food so the whole group can at least eat, comes back from Wal-Mart, and hears their testimony. And he doesn’t believe them. Perhaps he is from Missouri, the “show-me” state. Thomas wants real, tangible proof, not somebody else’s report. He wants to experience it for himself. He is not any more faithless than the rest of them: he only wants to experience what they have experienced. And what do the disciples, the earliest church community, do? Do they shove Thomas out the door? Do they ignore him in painful and awkward silence? Do they barrage him with comments and treatises about why he must believe? No. None of those things. Thomas is still with them, a week later, fully part of them, fully part of the church. Last week, on Easter, we said that our call, like the women’s was to look, and go, and tell. And we said that your task, this week, was to look for signs of life, signs of resurrection, signs of the impossible made possible by the action and grace of God. But what if…..what if you didn’t see any? What if there was nothing there? What if, even when you looked very hard, very diligently, and all you saw was death, or despair, or depression? If that was your experience, then, like most people, you probably blamed yourself. “I’m not faithful enough—I’m not holy enough. I’m not—something enough—or I would have seen something, I would have had a sign from God, I would have seen some kind of resurrection, however small.” But if that is what happened to you, if that was your experience, I hope you will be honest with yourself- and with us, the church, and say so. Thomas certainly says so. Thomas doesn’t blame himself, doesn’t see a lack or a problem with himself- for not seeing, for not believing, for asking for proof. In the passage from 1st John, which we read earlier, we hear a testimonial. “This we have heard, this we have touched, this we have seen with our own eyes- the Word, Jesus! Which is life!” It is a wonderful testimony and witness- but what strikes me most is that it is in the plural—the “we”. Not “I have seen the Lord”, but “we- we have heard, we have known, revealed to us”. Nearly every Sunday, we say one of the creeds- and that word comes to us from the Latin, credo, which means “I believe”…..but I think it would be better if we said it as, the plural, as “we”- because belief is not housed only in individuals. It resides in the community. Oh, don’t get me wrong. We, each, have beliefs. We, each, have faith. In a few weeks, the confirmation class will share their faith statements, their own, personal “I believes” with the elders. And each of the new elders has to share their own, personal statement of faith, when they are elected by the congregation to be an elder, with the rest of the Session. And it is a very moving experience—just ask the elders. We pretty much all get teary—at people’s honesty, at people’s witness, at the individual’s account of how God has shaped and formed them, how God has acted in their lives. But there is also a way in which our creeds, our “what we believes” belong to the whole group, the whole family of faith—and they are what hold us up when we can’t believe. A good friend of mine confessed to me that, after the death of her infant daughter, and her subsequent divorce, she could not say the Lord’s Prayer. She went to church every week, she sang in the choir, but she could not say that prayer- it was as if her throat clamped shut. But she took great comfort in the fact that even if SHE could not say it, she could rest in the prayers of the church, those other voices, praying, every week. A story is told about a young man, a student, in an Orthodox seminary. And he had come to the part of his studies where he was working on the creeds. And he went to his advisor, in much agony. “Father,” he said, “I can’t say these things. I don’t believe all these things. I’m not sure I believe any of these things.” “Young Man,” the priest thundered, “These creeds are not your creeds—they belong to the church. If you can’t say them, we will say them for you, until you can join your voice with ours.” There is room for doubt in the church. There is room for doubt in the life of faith. There is room for you, when the burdens get too heavy, when you get too weary, when you can’t find the words or voice to say much of anything. We will carry you—and we will love you, and we will hold you. Until you come to believe- or continue believing, or take up believing, again. Look at what Jesus does. He does not chastise Thomas, Jesus does not exclude him, he goes to him, and answers his request. “See my hands,” Jesus says, “reach out and touch…” and Thomas believes. And then, in an aside worthy of the tv show the Office, Jesus turns from speaking to Thomas and speaks to us: “blessed are those who have not seen and have come to believe.” I don’t think that Jesus is rebuking Thomas. Instead, I think Jesus is blessing all those -- from John's community up to our own -- who have managed to believe without the benefit of direct experience; all those, that is, who have managed to come to a faith that is not the opposite of doubt but which lives with doubts and yet still finds a way to believe. (David Lose, http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=577. ) As people of the resurrection, we don’t have to have it all together. We have faith along side of, mixed up with, our doubts. The church, the family of faith will hold you up. Christ, The Risen One is strong enough to bless our faith, bear our doubts, and use even people like us to make a difference in this world God loves so much. And, who knows, maybe a week or three, maybe a year, your questions will be answered or that doubt assuaged. Or maybe not. The point is that being faithful resurrection people isn't having no doubts, but living with them. (David Lose, http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=577) And John, the Gospel writer, says this: “Jesus did many other things, but these things are written so that you may come to believe…” or continue believing….the Greek is unclear. But that’s ok. Jesus comes, to wherever we are, in our journey, comes to us in doubt and in faith, and says “Peace be with you.” Amen.

Easter Sunday 2012

Isaiah 25:6-9 p 568 6On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.7And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.8Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. 9It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. This is the word of the Lord….Thanks be to God Mark 16:1-8 p 829 16 And When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome go and buy spices, in order that they might go and anoint Jesus.2And very early on the first day of the week, they go to the tomb, as the sun was rising. 3 And they had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?”4And they look up and see that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.5 And as they were going into the tomb, they see a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they are astounded.6But he says to them, “Do not be afraid; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised up; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.7But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”8 And they went out and fled from the tomb, being seized by terror and astonishment; and they said nothing to no-one, for they were struck with fear. This is the word of the Lord….thanks be to God An empty tomb changes everything. It was the dawn of a new day. The women, headed to the tomb, don’t seem to understand that—yet. They have gotten up very early, to care for, in the only way left to them now, their friend Jesus, who is dead. They have gotten the spices, and they are, rightly, concerned with the logistics—the tomb is sealed by a stone—a very, large and heavy stone. But when they get to the grave, the stone has already been rolled away. That should have been their first clue. An empty tomb changes everything. And they find inside the tomb not their friend, their beloved, but—a stranger, dressed in white. And he says: “Do not be afraid” Which, in the Bible, is always a cue to be afraid—because it means that the things we know, the things we understand to be the bedrock of reality, the things we are so sure of—are about to get changed. The whole world is about to be changed. We are about to be changed. And the young man says something else: “you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who has been crucified.” As if, in their grief, they didn’t understand who they were looking for, or what had happened to him. As if, in those 3 days, they might have, somehow, forgotten what happened to their leader. As if they couldn’t know the terrible death he had suffered, the terrible news of his death, the terrible truth that there was no more hope. The women were there, at the foot of the cross! They saw what had happened! They knew just how bad things were. And in their grief, they came anyway. “He is not here. Look- there is the place where they laid him. He has been raised.” An empty tomb changes everything. And the women are stunned, struck silent. Because what do you say, when everything you have known, is turned up side down? What can you possibly say when the impossible has become possible? What words can you summon to talk when even the dead won’t stay dead—how could you possibly go back to the disciples and try to explain that. Listen to what the angel says: for that is what he is, a messenger from God, an angel: Look. Go. Tell. The women are told to tell- and yet, as we read at the end of the chapter, the end of Mark’s gospel, that they told no one nothing—a double negative, in case we didn’t get it the first time—they told no one nothing—because they were afraid. So, it was a total fail. If Jesus was the king who was to come into the city on Palm Sunday, the conquering hero, then that was a failure, wasn’t it. If Peter, that fiery disciple, denied his lord, well, that was a disgrace and a failure. And if the disciples, afraid of what would happen, afraid of the authorities, afraid for their own skin, ran away, well, that was a pretty big failure. And if Jesus, the king, the savior, the Messiah, the One we have waited for, was arrested on Thursday and crucified on Friday, then that was the biggest failure of all. So it should be no surprise that the women fail at their task—to go and tell. But apparently, someone told. This news is so big, so good, so on-going, that it reaches out to us today. Did you hear the way we read the Gospel this morning? The Greek in this story uses almost entirely what is called “the historical present”—that is, things are happening now, written as if we are right there—because we are both there and here, and God is here, and the story is still on-going. The Good News is still good- that God is with us, that God is wiping away our tears, that God continues to be with us even in our failures, that God removes our disgrace, that even in our darkest moments, God is still saving us and loving us. So our call, this Easter morning, is the same as the women’s that first Easter morning. To Look. And Go. And tell. We are to look: to see where there is new life, impossible life, made possible only through the action and grace of God: People fed—where there was no food. A new church—born out of the death of the old one. A life restored, after a jail sentence; life healed, after addiction. New life—when the old life was gone, but we still clung to it because we were terrified, even when the messengers of God said “Do not fear”. Resurrection, an impossible thing, made possible by God who is still acting and moving today. We are not to stand around empty tombs, but we are to look, and see the new life that God brings. There was a story recently in the Presbyterian News Service, about St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There were a small church—and they were dying. Fewer and fewer came. A neighborhood school for children with disabilities asked if they would be willing to sell their property. We wanted to be a missional church, said their pastor, the Rev Anne LaMar. “We looked at what scripture has to say about what kind of building God wanted us to have, what kind of building did our members need to help them grow in faith, and what good news did our neighbors need to hear,” Rev LaMar said. What they soon realized was that the aging building no longer met their needs and that the congregation’s participation in mission was more important than its location. “Then we realized that the Little Lighthouse (the school) was our neighbor — good news to them would be for us to tell them, ‘Yes, we will sell you our property,’” LaMar said. So they did. They moved, and are now worshipping in a converted garage. Which sounds like failure. Now it’s interesting, that the angel on that Easter morning tells the women first to go and tell the disciples and Peter, that Jesus will meet them, is going ahead of them, into Galilee. That’s home territory for them. They are to go back home. Here’s an amazing thing: despite what Thomas Wolfe wrote, you can go home again. That with God, reconciliation and peace may take place within families. But also, in light of the amazing, life-changing resurrection, we are called to go to our ordinary, everyday lives, among the people we already know. Because God is there. In the Galilee of our everyday lives, we shall see and recognize the Risen Lord. That church in Tulsa, St. Andrew’s, was in a kind of Galilee- a regular neighborhood, still in Tulsa, and they met, every Sunday, in that converted garage. Ordinary, everyday worship. Rev LaMar still preached from a lectern. And the people still sat in chairs, set out in neat rows. But one day, one of the deacons looked out the back door, and said “you know, that backyard would make a wonderful garden.” Now, they just happened to be situated across the street from an apartment complex that housed many families with at-risk youth. So in the ordinariness of their everyday lives—in a backyard garden, they invited the youth to come and join them. The youth work in the garden, and are allowed all the free produce they can carry. Fresh produce that would be too expensive for many of those families. They are spreading the good news—one zucchini at a time. What started as failure was turned by God into new life. This is the God that changes our disgrace, our failures, into new life and hope. That Easter morning, the angel has one last instruction for the women: they- and we—are to tell- or, really “begin telling. Start telling.” Because the telling is not ever finished, not ever done. Just as Mark’s gospel opens with “the beginning of the Good News”- there really is no end to the good news- we are to begin telling, and keep telling. With our words. With our actions. With our lives. Easter is a holiday when many families get together. At Thanksgiving, many families have a tradition in which each person at the table tells something for which they are thankful. Make this Easter the time you and your family begin to talk about new life, impossible life, the good news- where you see it in your everyday day lives. An empty tomb changes everything. Amen.