Year C Easter
April 7, 2013
The Reverend Jo Miller
Hallelujah! Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed!
Hallelujah! I will add that the risen Christ is here and now. Greetings on this
2nd Sunday of Easter which is known throughout the Christian Church as the
lowest attendance day of the year. Almost always the priest takes a needed week
off. By the very fact that the church has the lowest attendance on this Sunday
and sometimes next Sunday the wise persons who devised our lectionary readings
have given us the same readings every year for the 2nd and 3rd Sundays of
Easter. Perhaps, they may have thought we will catch someone who has not heard
these great readings of the risen Christ.
Fr. Brent and Jessie gave us a wonderful backdrop last week
to the enormous changes in world view that Jesus was ushering in. It is very
difficult to change long held certainties. The changes Jesus spoke of were
profoundly different from the Roman/Greek world and the Jewish understanding of
God, life eternal, and faith. We struggle today with changing world views. I
remember my first term at college I was told “You will need to wear a different
set of glasses to see the bigger world.” Having come fresh off the farm I had
no idea what these people meant. I did learn, however.
Last week our Gospel reading ended with Mary Magdelene
meeting Jesus at the tomb. She did not recognize him until he spoke her name.
It is important to hear in our post resurrection stories that Jesus was not
always recognized at first because he was the risen Christ. When Jesus said to
Mary, “Do not hold on to me because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But
go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your
Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary went and announced to the disciples that
she had see the Lord and shared what he had said. This week we pick up on the
very next verse in the Gospel of John that in the evening of the first day the
disciples were gathered together and the doors of the house were locked for
fear of the Jews. I think they were generally just in fear their whole world
was turned upside down.
They did not know what to believe, whom to believe, or how
to believe. All but the women and the beloved disciple had deserted Jesus in
one way or another during the last few days. Perhaps they were huddled together
sharing the events of the last week. Some may have sat silent knowing what they
had done in fleeing from the garden when Jesus was taken away. They may have
been sharing or holding tight in their heart's feelings of blame, regret,
remorse, fear for sure of the Romans as well as the Jewish leaders. I wonder
how they were looking at each other. How did Peter feel knowing he had
denounced being with Jesus? We can know is they were humans with all the human
emotions we have. I do not blame them, they were living in a hostile world.
Fear is a primal emotion. It is what creates fight or
flight. It is a basic human response. It is what helped early humans like the
hunters and gatherers to live in frightful situations. It is still essential in
many parts of the world and the United States.
We should be able to relate in some way to the disciples
who were locked away behind the door in fear.
I have thought on this for a long time, every 2nd Sunday of
Easter. Many sermons will focus on the “doubting Thomas”. But, I am going to
say doubt is not all bad. It is also interesting that Thomas was not with the
disciples to begin within the house. In the Gospel of Luke these men doubted
the words of the women who said they saw the risen Christ. Luke wrote the
apostles seemed to think the story an idle tale and they did not believe the
women.
For me this is less about scrutinizing doubt as it is
looking at what we have locked away inside ourselves that we are afraid of
opening up to the world. The risen Christ comes to them. He appears to them.
The first words are, “Peace be with you.” He says it twice, “Peace be with
you.” And then he says, “As the Father sent me so I send you.” He breathed on
them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit, if you forgive sins they are forgiven,
if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
What do we do with these words of Jesus? What do they mean
for us today? We lock away the things we have said or done that we may be
ashamed of and there they stay locked inside us. We hold on to grudges tightly
locked inside. We may have sworn never to forgive a person and so there it is
locked inside. We may hold on to old regrets, hurts received from others,
failures, things we said and did to hurt others.
Jesus appeared to people who denied him, abandoned him, who
did not stand up for him in his greatest hour of need and with loving
forgiveness says, “Peace be with you.” This does not sound like the son of a
wrathful God who punishes the weak and disdainful. It was disdainful what Peter
did in denying that he knew Jesus three times and yet there is the Spirit of
the risen Christ saying Peace. He then sends them out to do the work he had
given them to do.
We receive this great act of grace every day of every week.
Jesus says something very profound, “If you forgive the sins of any they are
forgiven, if you retain the sins of any they are retained.” Forgiving ourselves
and others frees us. When we hold on to what others may have done or what we
have done, it stays in us. It is retained. This is an offering of freedom from
the chains of the past and perhaps chains of the future.
This grace of forgiveness offered freely, the spirit of the
risen Christ waits with open arms all we need to do is accept it. Sometimes it
is helpful to go through the Rite of Reconciliation as a visceral way of
unlocking those hidden doors for the one in whom we live and move and have our
being is the one to whom our hearts are open, all our desires are known and
from whom not one secret is hid.
These humans, these disciples of Jesus when given this
understanding of grace, peace and forgiveness were able to
begin their bold and life changing journey of turning their known world upside down. They were
sent to do God’s work in the world so are we.
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