There are things we do as children, that when I look back on now, don’t make a bit of sense to me. I’m not talking about things that just seem simple now that I’m older, like hide and seek, or a 10 piece puzzle set. I’m talking about things like “I know something you don’t know” or belting out a couple hundred verses of the “song that never ends,” with your sister, riding in the back seat of the minivan from Massachusetts to Tennessee to visit your grandparents. (My parents were particularly fond of that one, I’m sure you can imagine).
Another kind of game that fits into this category, a game that I sometimes even find adults playing every once in a while, is the never as clever as you think it is: “ha ha, made you look.” I don’t understand where the enjoyment comes from. Whenever I am duped by that genius move, I always have the same response: “of course I looked!" "why wouldn’t I look?” "YOU
That’s what people do when you tell them things. They look. Or at least, that’s what I do.
And I tell you this, because I think it may inform part of my curiosity about the disciples in the Gospel of John. Today, our story picks up on the story from Easter Sunday.
So if you remember, which I’m sure
But this time... nothing! The disciples, who had earlier sprinted to the tomb, stay put.
Here's what I want to know: Why didn't they go looking for him?! Why was an apparent grave robbery seemingly more intriguing than the apparent resurrection from the grave? So I try to imagine answers. Did the disciples simply not believe Mary? I mean, she had, in my book at least, shown she wasn’t playing “made you look” with them. Did they chalk up her story to the rantings of an hysterical person? Was it finally too wild to believe? Did they just roll their eyes, wink at each other, and try not to smirk over what this woman had said to them? OR is there something else going on? Is there some other reason, that helps answer the question of why didn't they go looking for him?
So I try harder to imagine answers. Maybe they believed Mary's story just fine, but were not sure where to start? Or did maybe they think that Jesus was nowhere to be found? After all, the last thing Jesus said to Mary, and which Mary then reported to the disciples, was that he was ascending to his Father. Did they think he was already back in heaven and it would be fruitless to go look? But even if they did hold out for these possibilities, you'd think they still would have split up, maybe into teams of two or three, and at least looked in and around the city. Right? So, the question remains, why didn't they go looking for him? Why did Jesus' disciples, after seeing the stone had been rolled away, not go looking for the one they called Rabbi, Lord, and Messiah?
It's difficult to answer this question for sure, but I think John gives us a major clue. He reports that on the evening of this first Easter day, the disciples were behind a locked door.
The door was locked because they were afraid. Now, there was no evidence that anyone was planning to hunt down the disciples. There’s no mention of fear earlier in the story, or at least not enough to stop a couple of them from running straight toward Jesus' tomb.
If there were a location, where they could have reasonably expected to run into some Roman soldiers or Jewish leaders, the tomb was it. But still, they went. Fear didn't stop them when they thought a grave robbery had happened. So the question we’re really asking this morning is this: Why now? Why did fear lock them up in a room now? Especially now that resurrection was in the air? Who were they really afraid of running into if they went out?
Could it be, that they were afraid of running in to Jesus himself? Certainly at least Peter would have had reason to be afraid. Remember, Peter had just denied Jesus three times.
And the other disciples may have been afraid too, or at least embarrassed that they had fled the scene in the garden. Perhaps, then, the disciples were afraid, that maybe, if they went out to look, just maybe, they would actually find Jesus, And maybe that scared them? Maybe that scared them so much, that out of fear, the disciples locked themselves in the house.
The fact that the disciples spent that first Easter evening all locked up, huddled in a room somewhere is so emblematic of much of our lives even to this day. The shooting of an unarmed teen in
I have Caps Lock. So every day, and certainly every night we lock the world out.
But we also know that sometimes it’s possible to lock ourselves in. We refuse to go out because we're too ashamed, because we’re feeling too down, or we’re too afraid we will run into someone we don’t want to see. And, frankly, we can't stand that thought. We have Caller I.D. on our cell phones so we can see who is calling. And if it's someone we don't want to talk to we just don't answer.
If we are ashamed of something that is known already, we are afraid of being seen by people. People whose eyes might make flickers of disapproval. And if we are ashamed of something people do not know about, we are afraid that someone will discover it, and that scares us half to death. For each of us, there are things that we have done, and things that we are doing, that can make us fearful that we are unworthy.
This morning, we’re reminded that the first Easter also began with the fear and sadness. And if it were up to the disciples, Easter would have ended with fear, sadness, and shame.
The disciples were ashamed of what they had done. They were ashamed of what their cowardice revealed about who they were. So they gathered together, and locked the door.
Maybe they convinced themselves they were keeping the Jews or Romans out. But maybe they were really keeping themselves locked in.
Thankfully for us, it wasn’t up to the disciples. Jesus did what he always does for anyone locked up in fear or shame – he comes in anyway. John tells us that he enters the room, stands among them, and says “Peace be with you”. He says it to them immediately the way he always does. He says "Peace." He says "Shalom." He says it's all right. He speaks a word that is the opposite of fear. He speaks a word that silences shame. Jesus never says anything about their past actions. Not a word about their betrayals and denials. He does not even say “no biggie” or “don’t worry about it”. Instead, he does something else. Jesus breathes on them, and says, “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.”
At first, this sounds kind of gross. But this breath is not a nasty “3 cups of coffee, a cough drop, and a dry mouth from preaching” bad breath kind of breath. This is the kind of breath we read about in Genesis when it says, “the lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed in to his nostrils the breath of life: and the man became a living being.” (Gen 2.7) Jesus breathes a life of spirituality and salvation in us, like God breathed life into Adam. He gives the disciples, and us, a Spirit that says, in a way more compelling than words alone, that all is forgiven. And then he sends us out into the world with a mission of forgiveness.
Jesus’ interaction with his disciples calls our attention to how He interacts with us, and how we interact with one another through his presence. Jesus enters the locked house where the disciples are and he breaks into their fear and shame, disabling it with the peace of God, and the Power of the Holy Spirit. These are the keys that unlock us from our own bondage.
The peace of God, and the power of the Holy Spirit, unlock the anxieties and fears that prevent us from being gathered up and sent out into God’s
But there are other keys on the key chain – the ones that lock and unlock forgiveness – these are keys that we are to carry, if we are to live out God’s mission. We can either use the keys of grace, which unlock the chain of guilt, shame, bitterness, and remorse; or we begin to think that we can hide out, behind our locked doors, only later realizing we’ve been holding ourselves prisoner to the very things we were trying to escape. So, my brothers and sisters, we had better use these keys wisely. And if we are going to speak of peace, it cannot just be peace in the sense that escapes conflict. We must speak of the peace of God. And if we are going to speak of love, it cannot be love in the sense of self interest or reciprocity. We must speak of the love of God. To speak of this peace is to speak of a sense that together, with and through God in Christ, we are webbed into a relationship of forgiveness, healing and reconciliation.
This does NOT mean suffering is simply erased, for the Gospel is far more than escapism. Rather, suffering, fear, weakness, loss, and shame are transformed by God’s power so that a new way to real peace, real joy, real love, and real hope is made possible. By participating in God’s mission of forgiveness, a forgiveness of others, and a forgiveness of self, we can come to know the peace of Christ. And, even though we may be scared and scarred, we will refuse to hide behind a locked door and ignore this angry world. It is BECAUSE we have been brought near to Christ and witnessed his transformed suffering, that we must share this witness with the angry wounded world.
One of the more famous images of Scripture comes from that line in Revelation when Jesus says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." Ordinarily when someone knocks at a locked door at your house, you know that it's up to you to get up and unlock the door and open it.
The good news of Easter is that even if you are too afraid to do that, too ashamed or too paralyzed by this or that feature of your own life, the lock won't stop God. Jesus will appear, right in the middle of everything you have locked up and before you even have the chance to say or do a thing he will show you his wounds, and say "Peace be with you!"
Amen
It really is not at all surprising that Easter cards have bunnies and eggs instead of empty tombs. Tombs would be a difficult sell. The 50 days of Easter are our premier and highest holy season; but even the clergy struggle with how to describe that seminal event, that experience which so galvanized Jesus' first disciples. How do you talk about resurrection?
Fifty or so years after it happened, when people began to write it down, great care was taken to give details that would communicate the ambiguity, confusion, but also the enormous certainty that was at the heart of their experience. Thus we hear that the resurrected Jesus appeared in their midst, even though the door was locked. They didn't recognize him until he spoke familiar words, and showed them the unmistakable wounds. They wrote it all, because, even though they could not say exactly what had happened, or how it had happened, they were quite clear that it HAD happened, and they were clear about WHY it happened.
Here's why: "Now Jesus did many other signs...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."
"...life in his name." Jesus' followers wanted others to have the gift they had received: life in Christ, life in lived in the kingdom of God, even in the midst of life in the kingdom ruled by Caesar. It was a gift that brought them peace, both as individuals and a community. It was a gift that gave them new purpose, a mission that transformed their lives, giving them the courage to go about the business of transforming their world.
Looked at from our perspective, two thousand years later, one might argue that their mission failed. Although Christianity took root, and the institutional church was formed, the reality is that this earth, with its enormous diversity, is not transformed. We are not all followers of Jesus. Even those who claim belief in Jesus as the Son of God experience division and dissent.
But the claim of failure uses the wrong criteria. The kingdom of God is not now, nor has it ever been, subject to laws of this world. The passage of two thousand years is our measure of time. We don't know how God - or even IF - God measures time. Jesus once spoke of destroying the Temple and building it again in three days, and right away those listening to him figured out that his version of three days likely didn't fit the ordinary calendar.
What we know from Jesus' teaching and ministry is that the kingdom of God is not a place but a phenomenon of presence and activity. Where someone was healed, there Jesus pointed to the kingdom. Where people were fed, there, said Jesus, is the kingdom. The great modern teacher, Verna Dozier called it the "dream of God." It is the vision God had at creation, a vision of how this thing we call a world could and should be.
That vision included us - human beings - from the very beginning. Our scriptures teach that while there is only one God, that one God is a social, communal being. The essence of the one God is love, and love cannot exist without an other.
Nor can love exist without freedom of choice. Love is a decision.
Thus is paradox. Created to love, we are also able not to love. Created to heal, we are also able to wound. Created for peace, we are also able to make war.
For eternity God has faced the challenge of getting us all on the same page. This world is a communal venture. Creator and created, we are in it together.
Faithfully and repeatedly God has communicated the dream. Sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt, Joseph was in the right place at the right time when famine threatened his family. Pouring the saving grain into their empty sacks, Joseph said, "God made it for good." Moses led the people away from the Pharaoh to the edge of the sea, where they were trapped, facing death by drowning or murder at the hands Pharaoh's army. God parted the waters, and they were saved. Wandering in the desert, they feared starvation. God dropped manna from the skies. In the years of the Judges, there was no king, and civil chaos often left the people in despair. Time after time, God brought them back from the brink. Time after time, God provided salvation.
Finally, in the ultimate communication, God took human form. Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, walked this earth, living the dream, making it visible in human time and place.
But God knew all along that just seeing the vision would not be enough. Not bound to human time, not bound by this world's patterns, God can see the kingdom stretching to infinity. But we are never able to see beyond the present moment, and our present moments were held captive by the reality of death. Even the promise of recurrent salvation was not enough.
So God acted. The historic action of God in the resurrection of Jesus went beyond salvation to blaze a path of healing and reconciliation. This is important. The resurrection was not a parlor trick done by God to impress folks and get them to create a church. It was not a magic ploy dangling before us the possibility of a home in the "sweet by and by." No, the resurrection was God breaking through the darkness, putting down death forever, to institute and initiate the healing of this world. It was God bringing wholeness to this life. The resurrection is God's demonstration of how life is going to be forever.
This was what was "...written so that you may come to believe ...and that through believing you may have life in his name."
"Life in his name..." Life in the kingdom of God - that is the gift of Easter. The first disciples got it. Hear again the reading from Acts that describes how they lived. "...the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and ...everything they owned was held in common...There was not a needy person among them." Those people were ordinary folks, living lives full of problems of the usual sort. But they were convinced that their beliefs required them to act in ways that were radically different from the ways they had been living before the resurrection. Post-resurrection, life in the kingdom of God changed, for example, the meaning of possession. The early Christians did not own things. They were stewards of things. They had a new understanding of the message of the psalmist who said: "The earth is the LORD's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live on it;" (Ps 24:1)
So what about us? What about 21st century Christians? If the kingdom of God is a phenomenon of presence and behavior - not bound by human concepts of time and geography; and if the resurrection is intended to enable believers to live and act in that kingdom, what does it mean for us? Paul wrote the following to the Christians at Corinth:
"All this (all of this life - our breath, our smiles, the love of family and friends, the food that sustains us, the work we do, the money we earn, the beauty that surrounds us, ALL THIS) is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation." (2 Cor. 5:18)
Paul's words speak to us as well. To live in the kingdom of God, to live in the world AFTER Easter Sunday, is live and practice the ministry of reconciliation.
The wounds suffered by this world and the people and creatures of it defy description. The ways in which pain and death can be delivered are as varied as the creation that endures them. So I cannot stand here and offer you a single direction which will solve the problem. Instead, God has given us the resurrection. The reality of resurrection is new life. We can never know what new life looks like until we are in the midst of living it, but we know that it is life that breaks the bonds and fears of death. That, then, is our template, our pattern.
Today, we celebrate Earth Day. Today we pause and focus our attention on a particular part of creation. For believers, those who strive to live daily in the kingdom of God, EVERY day is Earth Day. Still, from time to time, we must stop and take stock. What wounds are most before us in this present moment? Where and how is healing to begin?
Unlike the first century church, we do not hold all things in common. But we do acknowledge that all things come from God, and all things must work together for the good of the kingdom. So we try to figure out how to make that happen. Today, our Environmental Stewardship Commission has placed before us the notion of a "carbon footprint." Not being very scientifically-minded, I'm not real clear on how that works, but like the early Christians talking about resurrection, I'm pretty sure what it means. What carbon footprint means is that my existence on this earth affects others. My use of the gifts given me has an impact on how others get to use the gifts given to them.
It reminds me of a Christmas morning many years ago (long before Ipods and earbuds) when several of our children all got tape players (called "boom boxes"). They also all got cassette tapes (something else that has become obsolete). But when they all plugged in (they don't do any more either, do they?) and tuned up at the same time, the result was chaos. In order for them to enjoy their new gifts, they each had to go to a different room. It was a fairly minor accommodation, and it worked.
Today, our Environmental Commission presents us with a list of similar, minor accommodations. There are many truly easy ways to adjust your life and your enjoyment of the gifts you have received; ways that will in turn make it possible for others to enjoy theirs. This list will be given to you on a card as you leave worship this morning. You will find people and exhibits over in the parish hall that will explain and enhance the list.
Please take this seriously. This is not about nice things to do if you believe in climate change and global warming. This is about living the meaning and truth of Easter. If resurrection is real, if we believe, then our lives should show forth our believing. In the first century that meant shared ownership of all possessions. In the 21st century, it means CFL light bulbs, and rain barrels, and recycling, and cloth grocery bags and a whole host of other things that will help heal our world, and make it possible for God's gifts to be shared by all of God's creation.
You do not receive the gifts of resurrection alone. The dream, the kingdom of God, is communal. We are all, God and humanity, in it together, and every one of us holds our own unique piece of dream. We are all needed. We all have something both to receive and to give.