Turning Unbelievers Into Good-News-Speakers

Second Sunday of Easter/John 20:19-31

April 19, 2020

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

One of the things that lends authenticity to the Bible is that it has dirty laundry hanging out--all over it.  

God’s written Word proclaims good news in the same breath that it poses imponderable questions.   When we read or hear the Scriptures we catch glimpses that give us hope—while at the same time leaving us wondering what comes next.

The human writers who pieced God’s Word together could have been tidier—they could have smoothed over the rough spots and rounded off the jagged edges--but they didn’t.

The Bible tells the story of God and God’s people “warts and all”—with no apologies.  Nothing gets sanitized or swept under the rug--even episodes that don’t exactly put Jesus’ followers in the kindest light.

Episodes like our familiar gospel lesson for the Second Sunday of Easter.

Taken at face value, this starts out as a story about unbelievers....unbelievers who, because they’d been Jesus’ closest companions for years, should have known better.

This story begins with a bunch of bewildered disciples huddled together in a “safe house” on that first Easter evening.

Even though these guys had put on some mileage with Jesus…they still didn’t get it.

They thought that his crucifixion the preceding Friday had “done in” Jesus for good. 

So, fearful that Jesus’ fate might become their own, these  disciples pulled the shades, locked the doors, and hid.

But one of them was missing.    

For whatever reason Thomas was absent that first Easter evening.   Thomas missed all the hoopla when Jesus showed up three days after he’d been buried.   Thomas didn’t get to see the risen Christ with his own two eyes.

So when the others later told Thomas they had seen Jesus alive again…Thomas flat out declared he wasn’t going to believe it without receiving at least as much proof as they had gotten.

You’ve got to love Thomas. 

He was nobody’s chump. 

Every church council needs at least one Thomas on it:  someone who doesn’t immediately buy every hair-brained idea that comes along.

We’ve hung a nickname around his neck, calling him Doubting Thomas, as if for Thomas faith was elusive, hard to muster up.

But is that really fair?  

What if Thomas was actually like his fellow disciples—only more so?  What if Thomas’s motto was “seeing is believing?”  What if for Thomas faith and doubt lived, side by side?

At any rate, we see Thomas here in John chapter 20, Thomas in all his skeptical glory--demanding visual, “touchable” evidence that Jesus was really alive again.

And don’t you just love it—that Thomas’s story didn’t get edited out of the Scriptures? 

Is that not good news for the skeptics and doubters inside each of us?

Because there’s room in our Bible for Thomas, there’s room in God’s story for you and me, too! 

For, truth be told, we all carry around our own bulging bags of questions, fears and even doubts.  

Isn’t that particularly true right now, in these endless days of the global coronavirus pandemic?

Every day we’re bombarded by facts and figures and sobering projections about how many people are catching the virus, with a mounting death toll in its wake.

Do we not wonder at times whether God’s really going to pull us through this global mess?   

As people plagued by our own questions, wonderings and doubts we find that Thomas fits us like a glove. 

Thomas is you and me.  And the Bible--miracle of miracles!--does not shrink from telling his story.

The Bible, though, doesn’t simply make us feel at home with all our questions and doubts.  God’s Word doesn’t aim simply to make us into more healthy, well-adjusted unbelievers.         No….but rather the Bible also tells us what God does with unbelievers, how God deals with doubters, how God turns unbelievers into good news-speakers.

It is God’s specialty to transform doubters into shouters.

That, too, is the story--the real story--of this gospel text.

First Jesus wondrously shows up in that locked room with his followers on that first Easter evening. 

The Risen Christ appears to them—not to deliver a stern lecture about the dangers of unbelief—but to proclaim a word of gentle peace.

“Shalom!” is the first word out of Jesus’ mouth.

Shalom!  —which means “Peace to the nth degree.”

That’s what Jesus says to his unbelieving followers…and then, so they’ll know him as it dawns on them that Jesus now has death behind him, he shows them the scars of his crucifixion.

How curious—that rather than scientifically proving to them that he’s ALIVE—the Risen and living Lord Jesus proves that he was really dead.

Then, and only then, do the disciples rejoice, in giddy recognition of their risen Lord.

Next, without wasting a second, Jesus gives these unbelievers work to do, along with the power to do it--all in one breath (literally--all in one breath!) when Jesus breathes new life into 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.”(v. 22-23)

What does Jesus do with this tiny band of shivering, knee-knocking unbelievers?  He drafts them for his service, makes them his ambassadors, catches them up in his own work of piecing back together the whole creation--one shattered relationship, one jaded unbeliever, one repentant sinner at a time.

And Thomas?  What does Jesus do for Thomas?

A week after the first Easter Jesus does for Thomas exactly what Thomas needed him to do.  Jesus graciously, lavishly gives Thomas the grounds he needs to become a believer.  “Put your finger here, Thomas...Reach out your hand and put it in my side.   Do whatever you need to with me in order to have faith.  Do not doubt but believe.” (v. 27)

What does Jesus do for Thomas?  He transforms Thomas the doubter into Thomas the shouter, as he exclaims:  “My Lord and my God!”(v. 28)

And so may we also declare that Jesus who was crucified, has been raised to new life—nevermore to die again!

May Thomas’s good confession find its way to our lips, too.

The proof in the pudding, you see, isn’t just that Thomas and the other disciples believed in Jesus….but that you and I believe, through their powerful witness.

It is for us that the Bible lets the dirty laundry hang out all over.  Or as John the gospel writer puts it: “These are written 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.” (v. 31)

There’s the pay off!  It is for you and me that the Bible allows the stories of skeptics like Thomas to be told....for only in so telling do we also come to behold what God does with the “show me” guys, the doubters who dot the pages of the Bible.

And what God does with them is to turn unbelievers—like you and me!--into gospel-speakers and gospel-enactors!

God transforms us doubters into shouters who never tire of proclaiming Thomas’s greatest line: “My Lord and My God!”

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Aftershocks of Easter

Easter Sunday/April 12, 2020

Matthew 28:1-10

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

In St Matthew’s version of the Resurrection of our Lord…the first Easter morning began with an earthquake.

Now I’ve never been in one of those—thank heavens!—and we don’t exactly live in an earthquake zone.  But I bet at least some of you HAVE experienced an earthquake, somewhere!

There’s a famous firsthand account of an earthquake written by the great American author Mark Twain when he was visiting San Francisco in October of 1865.

Twain writes:  It was just after noon, on a bright October day…[and] all  was solitude and a Sabbath stillness.

As I turned the corner, around a frame house, there was a great rattle and jar…[and then]there came a terrific shock; the ground seemed to roll under me in waves, interrupted by a violent joggling up and down, and there was a heavy grinding noise as of brick houses rubbing together….and as I reeled about on the pavement trying to keep my footing, I saw…the entire front of a tall four-story brick building on Third Street sprung outward like a door and fell sprawling across the street, raising a great dust-like volume of smoke!

And [then]…every door, of every house, as far as the eye could reach, was vomiting a stream of human beings; and…there was a massed multitude of people stretching in endless procession down every street my position commanded. Never was a solemn solitude turned into teeming life quicker. [1]

I especially like that last line of Mark Twain’s account:  Never was a solemn solitude turned into teeming life quicker.

Well Mr. Twain, maybe there was another time when that happened—when a “solemn solitude turned into teeming life!”

It happened at a garden tomb, just outside Jerusalem, on the first Easter morning.  Soldiers were snoozing by a carefully-sealed grave.   Those guards had been posted there by the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate in order to thwart anyone outside Jesus’ grave from trying to break into Jesus’ grave.

But what those Roman soldiers failed to realize was that the biggest danger they faced wasn’t any grave robber on the outside trying to get in.

No, the biggest danger was the Grave-Robber who was already inside that sealed-up tomb!

This Grave-Robber had for three days been dead-as-a-doornail. 

But he didn’t stay dead!  God saw to that!   Jesus—having experienced the “extreme makeover” of death—came back to “rob the grave,” to deprive death from ever again having the power it once enjoyed!

And that event, that world-turning, ground-pounding event could only be accompanied by an earthquake--measuring over 10 on the Richter Scale (a scientific scale, mind you, that only goes up to 9!)

When Jesus arose, the earth shook because death was losing its grip on us, once and for all.

But that’s not all:   because that Easter morning earthquake was itself an aftershock of an earlier earthquake—described only in Matthew’s gospel.

The Easter morning earthquake was a reverberation of the Good Friday earthquake—a cataclysm that struck the moment God’s Son breathed his last.   Then, too, the ground rumbled—powerfully enough, Matthew tells us, to “wake the dead!” (Mt. 27:51-53)

When Jesus died, the earth shook because sin and the devil were being displaced—set aside—defeated for good.

Two earthquakes within three days—and here’s the kicker:  Unlike every other earthquake this old world has ever known, the after-shocks from these two quakes have yet to end.

The after-shocks of Jesus death and resurrection are still rolling across the landscape of human history.   The tremors are still being experienced by ordinary persons like you and me.  

Even in this week when another world-turning event has been unfolding….when a global coronavirus pandemic has stricken over 1.5 million human beings, killing over 100,000 of them, while terrifying everyone else.

Even during this awful time we’re experiencing here on planet earth….the reverberations of the first Good Friday and Easter Sunday earthquakes have not faded away.

• For whenever Jesus’ saving death sets one more sinner free—the earth continues to roll beneath our feet.  
• And whenever someone finally “gets it” that the Devil’s reign of terror is over—a seismograph needle bounces wildly! 
• And whenever Jesus’ grave-robbing resurrection frees up some sufferer to laugh in the face of death—the earth keeps rumbling beneath us.   
• And whenever we make our own way to a cemetery to bury a loved one—whenever we stare down into that black hole in the ground and shout the Apostles Creed into that fierce darkness—another aftershock of Easter rearranges our whole landscape!

It’s happening right here.  Jesus the Risen One is among us even now.   Can you detect the aftershocks of his death-defying love?   

And can you feel your own knees knocking—as the same God who raised up his Crucified Son, is resurrecting you into new life, boundless hope, and undefeatable love?

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

---

[1] Excerpted from Mark Twain's book, Roughing It (Hartford:  American Publishing Company, 1872).   Accessed on 4/8/2020 at https://projects.eri.ucsb.edu/understanding/accounts/twain.html

Saved to Be Sent

Devotional Reflection for the Sunday of the Passion (4/5/2020)

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Let us pray:  “Sovereign God, you have established your rule in the human heart through the servanthood of Jesus Christ.  By your Spirit, keep us in the joyful procession of those who with their tongues confess Jesus as Lord and with their lives praise him as Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”

A reading from St Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, chapter 2: 

⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
⁶ who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
⁷ but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross.

⁹ Therefore God also highly exalted him
   and gave him the name
   that is above every name,
¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus
   every knee should bend,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue should confess
   that Jesus Christ is Lord,
   to the glory of God the Father.

Have you ever found yourself driving in the wrong direction on a one-way highway?

I have--and it was one of the most frightening, disorienting experiences of my life!!

Early on we all learn to “go with the flow”—to follow the crowd and head in the same direction everyone else is going.

In Genesis chapter 3 we learn how our first parents were tempted to believe that their path should involve leaving the earth and climbing up, up, up to God.   “You will not die,” their Tempter told them…”if you eat the fruit God told you not to eat, you will not die but you will become like God!”

That’s what all pick up on, early in life….that we’re traveling a one-way road that takes us upward, ever upward, up to God, up to grab a hold of the godlike powers we long for.

Here in our reading from Philippians 2, though, we witness a different road-- a stark reversal of what the Tempter told our first parents in Genesis 3.

What’s revealed to us here in Philippians 2 is another path, a path that reverses all the arrows, a path that shuns grabbing and hanging on to whatever we lay our hands on….

This alternative route is a path of letting go, emptying ourselves, and traveling downward….down to creaturely life, down to service, down to giving ourselves away in caring for others and for this good earth.

On Passion Sunday we behold how this alternative route, this path of“downward mobility” is precisely the way our Suffering Savior traveled, going against the grain for us, setting aside all his divine prerogatives for us, pouring himself out for us and for all creation.

This One saves us and redeems the whole creation….this Jesus saves us in order to send us back into the world, walking along his amazing road of “downward mobility” which we come to realize is the life we were always meant to live.

My friends, as we live into this global pandemic—we desperately need to hear of this alternative road, this Jesus road, which is our only hope.

Jesus saves us, you see, in order to send us--to send us in service to our neighbors and in tender care for this good earth.   Jesus saves us in order to send us (in the words of Martin Luther) to send us as “little Christs” in our troubled, threatened world.

Now, I realize that that might seem to go against the grain of what we’re hearing these days.   We’re asked to live apart from one another in order to defeat the coronavirus—so how can we go down, down, down to serve our neighbors?

Well, it’s happening, my friends, despite our need to practice physical distancing from one another…we still see people like us serving one another.  

Pay attention to the news and to social media, and you’ll catch glimpses of Christ still moving down to those in deepest need….

You’ll see little Christs sewing face masks in the homes of people “sheltering in place”

You’ll see little Christs writing out checks or making online donations to the local homeless shelter or soup kitchen or nursing home.

You’ll hear little Christs on the telephone, calling up friends, checking in with neighbors, especially those who live alone….

And you’ll witness little Christs kneeling six feet apart from one another in a hospital parking lot—medical personnel, praying for the strength and protection they need to keep fighting the coronavirus.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is still saving and sending us all, even now when we feel stuck and useless at home….Our Lord Jesus transcends the rules of quarantine under which we must live for a season….now, even now, Christ is still at work through all his “little Christs” like you and like me.

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.    

Please pray with me:   “Gracious God, shake us up in this time when we need to live apart from one another.  Show us how even behind the doors of our homes you are still calling us to be your little Christs in this hurting world.   Heal those who are ill and comfort those who are grieving.  Guide, protect and defend all the front-line soldiers in our war against the coronavirus….and use us to be your hands, feet and voice in this aching world.    All these things—and whatever else you see that we need—we ask for, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord who saves us to send us.  Amen."