Sermon preached on April 27, 2014 at Ebenezer Lutheran Church, Chicago, IL.
Gospel: John 20:19-31
We resume the story of Jesus’ resurrection only a matter of hours after Mary has discovered the empty tomb, and has herself had an encounter with the risen Jesus. Our gospel text at the Easter Vigil ended with Mary declaring to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” And what is the result of her proclamation? The disciples gather together and lock the doors. They are afraid. But, I would like to believe that they are afraid because they haven’t yet seen Jesus for themselves, and, just like “doubting Thomas” the disciple for whom this text is often named, the rest of the disciples also need Jesus to show up to them, in person, before they will be able to go out and proclaim the good news to all the world. But the story doesn’t conform to what I would like to believe.
You see, Jesus does appear to them, gathered as they are behind locked doors. And although you’d think this would send them out into the streets proclaiming the triumph of God’s kingdom. It will take several more appearances by Jesus before anyone proclaims anything. A week later, when Jesus returns, and our famous friend Thomas is invited to put his fingers into the wounds of Christ, the disciples are gathered behind locked doors.
This gives me pause. Last Sunday we exuberantly celebrated the resurrection of Jesus. We dove fully into the joy of our triumphant savior rising from the grave. We lived in the space that Mary inhabited as she raced back from the empty tomb, the words “I have seen my Lord” were springing from our lips just as they had sprung from hers. Now though, the initial joy having calmed, we are faced with the question that stalled those first disciples. What on earth and in heaven does this mean?
In a crass sense, it means that Jesus wins. It means that all of that stuff that Jesus taught about caring for the poor and vulnerable, forgiving one another, loving our enemies, seeking the good for our neighbor, and not just the neighbor that lives next door, but the neighbor across the city and the one on the other side of the world. It means that these things are not just the utopian dreams of a failed reformer whose beautiful vision we could bury right alongside him in the tomb.
So, now I understand why, a week after the resurrection, we find the disciples still in that upper room. As Christians, we have a couple thousand years of tradition behind us and we still don’t always know what to do with the resurrected Jesus. That’s how upsetting and controversial God’s way of being in the world can be, especially to those of us for whom the status quo works fairly well.
I met a minister named Al Sharp the other day. If you’ve heard of an organization called Protestants for the Common Good, Al was the executive director of that organization for about 15 years and Al has a very clear picture of how Christians should respond to Jesus’s resurrection. He is convinced that Christians should go about seeking justice for our neighbors. I would say even that Al holds an uncompromising expectation for Christian engagement in the world. Al is kind of like Jesus in this way. And this is what makes me uncomfortable about both of them. There’s not really much wiggle room.
If I read the gospels, I see that Jesus makes his agenda really clear: feed people, heal them, reach out to the vulnerable, visit people who are in prison, turn the other cheek, walk another mile. Now, scholars do tell us that some of these actions prescribed by Jesus meant something different in Jesus’s time than they do to us. But there is no historical circumstance I can use to explain away Jesus’s agenda of bringing good news to the poor and freedom to the oppressed. And if I translate what Jesus was doing back in first century Palestine into today’s language, well, I think Jesus would be going to Cook County Jail and the underpasses along Lakeshore Drive and to the immigrant detention center and to Springfield and City Hall and probably Washington, too. Of course, in Jesus’s vision of the world, we wouldn’t need, Care for Real, or One Northside, Cook County Jail or any of the other myriad organizations some which serve… or contain… the most vulnerable and most oppressed members of our society. These “social problems” are symptoms of the deeper reality that our human society, the kingdom of the world, falls short of the vision of God.
Jesus came to live into God’s vision – a vision where the vulnerable are not isolated by institution or geography but where the lepers are close enough to touch and the mute are close enough that we hear their stories and the blind are so close that we see them as beloved children of God and that we recognize ourselves in all of them. Jesus died for his radical acclamation of this kingdom of love, mercy, and freedom. And he was raised by a God who refused to let that vision die.
Now, our tradition has not, historically, been oriented to that kind of action. The way our theology of grace has been interpreted has caused teachers and preachers, and the institutional church to shy away from taking a stand on what it means to live after the resurrection of Jesus. We have played it safe and, quite frankly, have sometimes found ourselves on the wrong side of history because of it. Our tradition steps uneasily through the language about transforming the world, which is God’s work, after all.
But, having read the scriptures, having traveled the three days of Jesus washing his disciples feet, dying on the cross, and being raised again, I have to concede that God has made a powerful case that I, as one who has spent time with Jesus and seeks to follow him, must not only consider with sympathy the plight of my neighbor, but also must visit him in jail, break bread with her and her children, and work to ensure that all people have adequate housing and receive fair wages, to bring the discussion to a more contemporary context. Many of you, I know, are directly involved in or contribute financially to organizations that seek to serve the vulnerable and that are seeking to change the system that marginalizes and oppresses vulnerable groups. But, if any of you are feeling guilty or put-upon right now, know that you’re hearing this from one who is suffering from the deep conviction of the inadequacy of my own life before God in the world beside my neighbor. I am like the disciples, locked in the upper room after Jesus has already appeared the first time, paralyzed by the implications of Jesus’s resurrection for my life, my worldview, and my faith. The magnitude of the task at hand and the complexity of the systems of injustice in this world are, to say the least, daunting.
And as I sit paralyzed, Jesus comes back, over and over again, in the Word read and proclaimed, in the waters of baptism that call us all children of God, equally loved in God’s eyes, in the Eucharist given freely for all. Jesus comes back for the ones who have not yet experienced his resurrection for themselves, like Thomas, but also for the ones who are still, or again, locked in the upper room. Oh Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.
reflectionsfromthewilderness 