Sermon for April 19, 2020 - Easter 2 - Year A - The Rev'd Jeffrey W. Mello

Easter Two – Year A

Preached on April 19, 2020

At St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

Acts of the Apostles 2:14a, 22—32

1 Peter 1:3—9

John 20:19—31

It is remarkable, isn’t it, how scripture written thousands of years ago can continue to capture the lived realities of our lives today.  It is what makes it Living Word rather than lived history.

“A week later his disciples were again in the house.”

It is a week after our own Easter celebration and we are, again, worshipping online, in our homes.

Like the disciples, we are separated from the world, locked in our upper rooms, out of fear.  

In the first Letter of Peter, the author writes of our inheritance of a new birth, a living Hope that we have been given by God to cling to and in which we are to be rejoicing, “even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials.”

Living Word, not just lived history.

As Jesus’ earthly life and ministry was a battle between love and fear, so now his post-resurrection life continues the struggle.  Fear and love meet again.

This first week after the first Easter, the followers of Jesus are behind closed doors out of fear, and so are we.  

With decline of mainline Christianity as it has been reported since the mid 20th century, many in the church point to the the early church as a guide for how we might be church in the world today.  Finally, we thought we understood what it meant to be the “outsider” in the cultural context, pushed to the margins of relevance in the so-called secular public square.

The church was forced to articulate a vision of hope and peace and love that was mostly spoken and felt, but rarely able to be produced on command.  We, the church, lost the marketing battle against things that could be touched and felt and pointed to and presented as evidence that life was good.  The car, the clothes, the job, the house.  These became the things that one could produce to prove that the life being lived was a good one.

And we, the church, have been playing catch up ever since.  Fearful of sounding flaky, or pushy, idealistic or foolish, we have hemmed and hawed trying to make ourselves look more like the world around us, rather than working to make the world around us look more like the Kingdom of God we pray to know on earth as it is in heaven.

The church has always had to defend the power of the spoken, the heard, the believed, the felt and the known against the the seeable, the touchable, and the showable.

Jesus reminded his followers that a relationship with God is known through hearing the voice of God.  The sheep hear the shepherd's voice, and they know they are the shepherd’s.  You can’t tell by looking at them, by what they wear, what they own, where they’re from or what they do.  

In the Acts of the Apostles we heard this morning, Peter is preaching Jesus’ resurrection reminding the crowd and the reader, “this Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.”

In the first letter of Peter, the author writes, “Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.”

Sometimes believing is seeing. 

In John’s gospel, Thomas comes to represent all those who would follow Jesus without the benefit of having walked with him, learned at his feet, seen him on the cross or examined the empty tomb.  

Thomas was just going to have to take the other disciples’ words for it.  Just like their followers would.  Just like we do.

How were the followers of Jesus supposed to find Hope now, to know God’s love now, to see the vision Jesus’ cast for the dream of God become a reality now?

How are we?

Thomas shows us the way.  It is no secret that I love Thomas.  He has gotten a bad wrap; in the church, in art and in idiom.  

Thomas never touches Jesus.  Though I love the art of Carravaggio, he was wrong to show Thomas putting his finger in the wound in Jesus’ side.

Thomas doesn’t do anything the others didn’t do when they saw Jesus.  Thomas doesn’t ask for anything the others weren’t given.  None of the others gave their hearts over to the Risen Christ without him coming and standing in the midst of them in their fear and breathing Peace upon them.

But, sure, Thomas is the doubting one, the incredulous one, as Carravaggio characterized him.

But Thomas teaches us something central about what it means to be a follower of Christ.  Thomas gives us the roadmap for how it is we are to find Christ among us today even as we are quarantined in fear.

Show me the wounds.

Thomas does not ask for a Hallmark image of the Risen Christ.  He does not request trumpets or lilies, or angelic voices from heaven.

Thomas asks for wounds.  Thomas seeks the torn flesh of his beloved friend and rabbi.

Show me, Thomas says, where the God of Love was broken open.  And show me how that breaking open did not end him.

Show me brokenness living new life.  Show me death defeated after it has done its best.

Thomas doesn’t ask for things to be easy again.  He doesn’t ask for loaves and fishes, or cheering crowds. Thomas has no interest in things going back to the way they were before.

Thomas knows the God of Love can always be found where life is the hardest, where human brokenness is par for the course.

The author of the Gospel has Jesus responding to Thomas that “blessed are  those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  

I couldn’t agree more.  I think those that are able to have a deep and abiding relationship with God that hasn’t been borne of brokenness, or despair or even death, they are blessed.  But I’m not one of them.

Anytime I have known the risen Christ in my life, it is a Risen Christ who has shown me the scars on the Body of Christ and how that Body, though broken, continues to live.

I know that Christ is Risen in this time we are in today. I know this not because everything is back to normal, as though this pandemic never happened. I know Christ is risen because the Food Pantry is feeding three times as many people a week as they were before the Pandemic hit.  I know that Christ is Risen because people are sewing masks as fast as they can, not for fun, but because they are needed.  I know that Christ is Risen in this time because people I know and love are terrified, and they are exhausted, they are confused and they are lonely.  And they are waking up every day to meet the challenges in front of them with as much grace and love and mercy as they can muster.

New life is all around me, bearing the wounds of body of Christ.

I know that Christ is Risen and stands with me in my literal upper room because I keep getting glimpses, each day, of the way that life continues to trample death under its feet.  I know that Christ is risen because each day there are, in the world, acts of mercy only Love could motivate.  I know that Jesus lives because each day the scars are laid bare for all the world to see and still there is hope, still there is life, still there is Love.

Hope in the face of despair.

Love in a time of fear.

Wholeness born of a willingness to be broken.

A life to be lived only after we have died to that which keeps us from living.

Jesus comes and stands among us, locked in our upper rooms in fear and speaks to us, bearing the wounds of a broken world.

“Peace be with you,” Jesus says to Peter, and to us.

May we hear it so we might know it, know it so we might come to believe it, believe it so we might speak it, speak it so someone might hear it.

Peace be with you, scars and all.

Amen.

© 2020 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello