April 19, 2020 - Easter 2A
John 20: 19-31 http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Easter/AEaster2_RCL.html
Can you believe it? Easter was only one week ago! Those of you who joined me last week heard me talk about how time somehow feels different with so many of us isolating at home. It’s hard to keep our days straight. But we are now officially 8 days into the Great 50 days of Easter, which will culminate May 31 on the Day of Pentecost. Does it feel like Easter to you?
As we come to our Gospel story this morning, Mary had seen the Risen Lord, but the others had not. It was only a story so far. Peter and John had seen the empty tomb, but what it all meant was still unclear. To the disciples in the upper room that first Easter evening, or Thomas before Jesus had entered the upper room for the second time a week later, it may not truly felt like Easter yet.
It may not yet feel like Easter to you either. I hope it does. I hope you have already embraced the Good News of the Risen Lord and are experiencing a lightness and joy to your days. But I’m afraid that some of us can relate to a cartoon I saw recently that said, “Easter is the day when Jesus comes out of the tomb, but if he sees his shadow, there will be 6 more weeks of Lent.”
You and I, like the disciples, are largely still isolated in our homes, maybe experiencing some level of fear. Most of us are not afraid, just limiting our public exposure because we want to be obedient and safe. But even if you have kept a more normal routine to your days, does it feel like Easter yet for you? Or does it still feel like Lent? Or if Not Lent, then March 584th or something? It may make you ask the “So what?” question. “Why Easter… so What?”
Thank goodness we here in our part of Virginia are having a beautiful spring… so many trees flowering and flowers popping up. Seeing that beauty makes it easier to proclaim the resurrection.
But the Good News we have from our Gospel today is that it doesn’t really matter how you feel about it, or what else is going on in your life. The Good News of Easter is that Easter comes to you unbidden. The Risen Lord will show up – sometimes when you least expect him to.
Jesus comes to you, comforting you, empowering you, and sending you forth to continue his work.
As we gather together on this 8th day of Easter, let’s dwell on these Easter appearances of Jesus a bit, and see how we might break them open in new ways, so that we too, can experience the Risen Lord.
The first thing to notice is that it says, “Jesus came and stood among them” and then he said, ‘Peace be with you!’”
This very same sequence happens twice. Once in the upper room on Easter Evening, and again with Thomas a week later.
He stood among them. He pronounced his peace.
Jesus came to them in the darkness, behind shuttered doors, amid the fear and the questions, and gave them peace. The peace that passes all understanding.
And Jesus does that for you and me, too. He comes to stand right next to you. The doors or barriers of fear you’ve set up in your life are no match for Jesus… though the doors are locked, Jesus comes to stand with you. He comes to give you Peace. His peace, even in a chaotic world.
Breath in. Breath out. Let yourself experience that Peace.
Next Jesus commissions the disciples, “As the Father has sent me so I am Sending you” and then he breathes on them (kind of weird, huh?) and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Jesus gives them work to do… to Go into the whole world, just as Jesus came to the people of Israel, and to carry on the same work Jesus did. Work of healing, reconciling, of pronouncing God’s forgiveness, of loving each other as Jesus loved us. Even when our ability to “Go into the world” is limited somewhat, we still have that mission. Your world right now may be somewhat confined to your household or your workplace, or those whom you have contact with across the driveway, or who you engage with via social media or telephone. Nevertheless, you are sent to them as well. Your house and your Facebook page may be the world Jesus is sending you to. How are you proclaiming Jesus there? Are you letting Jesus’ peace be known wherever you show up? We can’t do this in our own power. We need the Holy Spirit.
I love how the image of Jesus’ breath and the Spirit takes us back to the very beginning of God’s story in the Bible. The word Spirit, breath, and wind are all the same word, in both Hebrew and Greek – Ruach and Pneuma both have those multiple meanings of Spirit, breath, and wind. In the beginning of Genesis, The Spirit of God hovered over the waters in creation. When God made humankind, he breathed the breath of life into Adam so that he became a living soul. Later, God told the Prophet Ezekiel who was standing in the Valley of the Dry Bones to Prophesy to the breath. “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live."
Now Jesus is breathing the breath of life, his Spirit, into the people of the New Creation, so that through those disciples, and through us, new life can come to the whole world.
You know what that means, don’t you? Jesus is breathing his Spirt into YOU so that you can be enlivened to live fully into the person God created you to be. Jesus breathes his Spirit on all of us showing us that he is always with us, not even a breath away, and God’s creative power works in us and through us in the world.
It’s too bad Thomas missed Jesus’ first appearance to the disciples in the upper room. We don’t know where he was. He certainly wasn’t locked away in fear… maybe he was out doing essential business … getting groceries or wine. Maybe he was serving some of the needy in the community. We don’t know. But when he comes back after Jesus has come and gone that first Sunday, he’s skeptical. Unfortunately, his skepticism of the disciples story has earned him the moniker of “Doubting Thomas.” Thomas said, “ "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." He would believe Jesus. He wasn’t so sure about his crazy friends.
But Thomas isn’t asking for anything more than the other disciples received. Mary Magdeline didn’t know what to make of the empty tomb until she met Jesus in the Garden. The other disciples were still wondering what all this meant until they saw Jesus in the upper room. In the end, it doesn’t seem that Thomas needed to put his hands in the wounds. Merely Jesus’ appearance, and the words spoken from the Word made Flesh allowed him to make the most emphatic profession of Jesus’ identity in the whole Gospel. “My Lord and my God.”
The Gospel of John now comes full circle. John started his Gospel based on Genesis to show how Jesus was the beginning of a new creation. “In the Beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God.” Thomas cries out, “My Lord and My God.” No one else is John’s Gospel explicitly names Jesus “God” until Thomas’ confession. John’s whole Gospel shows us how indeed Jesus is God through his life, signs, death and resurrection.
What sounds like a rebuke to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” is probably meant more as an encouragement for us. None of us were there in the upper room that first Easter. None of us were there a week later. We have not seen the Risen Lord with our own eyes, and yet, we have come to believe. Jesus calls us blessed because of it.
It doesn’t mean all our doubts are gone, or that we aren’t skeptical about how God’s plan for this world will turn out.
Earlier this week, I asked a question on my Facebook page: What do you doubt? What do you NOT doubt? One of my friends said, “I doubt I’ll be able to get a haircut for three months!” Another gravely predicted, “I doubt that some businesses will survive, and that there’s no doubt about that.” Sad, but true. But others raised deeper questions. Some expressed uncertainties and fears about their own health or their loved ones’, doubting they’d escape the virus. Others doubted the equity of the situation and our society’s response to it, and how or if God was involved in that. Some expressed doubts that things will ever get back to “normal,” while others expressed doubts that we would take this opportunity to change ourselves and embrace a “new normal.”
Several people lamented the fact that, and I’m paraphrasing, that we are so addicted to chaos, rush, and busyness that we will choose to jump back into old patterns- stuffing our time with stuff- and miss the opportunity to hear God in the quiet and rest, that we’d miss the opportunity to change our society into one that is healthier, more balanced, more in tune with the way God created us to be.
It’s not always comfortable to confront what the Spirit may bring to our minds when we take time to be quiet. As one person said, “I’ve had too much time to think” and it was bringing up a lot of doubts about things going on in their own lives. But it’s only when we allow ourselves the time to get to know God, and see ourselves with God’s eyes that we can experience growth and transformation, and choose to be and act differently.
These are indeed strange times. We all have doubts and uncertainties about what the future will look like. But we are a people of hope.
To the question, “What DON’T you doubt” I received several beautiful answers. “I don’t doubt grace and the undeniable power that grace, love, and God’s power can give. Another said, “I don’t doubt that we will continue to “Pay it Forward.” Another said, “I don't doubt God's unlimited capacity to love and forgive.”
We have a Lord who miraculously comes into a dark, locked room full of fear and pronounces, “Peace Be with you.” We have a Lord who meets us where we are, and gives us what we need to step forward in faith. We have a Risen Lord who breathes in us the breath of life, and empowers us, sending us to the word to share Jesus’ light and love and restoration.
So, whether it feels like Easter already to you, or not quite, receive whatever it is that Jesus is giving you, his Presence, his Power, his Peace. Amen.