Tag: resurrection

Protected and Connected

This past weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The lectionary Gospel reading for the day was John 17:6-19, after Jesus has given his farewell discourse to his disciples, and he looks up to heaven and prays for them. I referenced a bit of John 17 before and after the lectionary verses.

“Protected and Connected”

This is the seventh and last Sunday of the Easter season. In our Easter lectionary this year, we have been heavy into John’s Gospel. We heard about the empty tomb and Mary Magdalene encountering Jesus there. We read about Jesus appearing to the disciples and coming back again to make sure Thomas had the experience he needed to believe.

But for the majority of Easter, the lectionary doesn’t give us Resurrection readings. It takes us back into John’s Gospel just before Jesus was arrested. If Easter is a celebration of the Resurrection, why do we have these other readings?

Here’s one way of thinking about it. The Resurrection IS the good news—it’s the revelation, the payoff, it’s what changes everything. It’s part of the proof of who Jesus is. It’s why we get charged up for Easter Sunday.

In light of this good news, the lectionary then takes us back to look at the last things Jesus says to his disciples before he is arrested and killed. Why? Jesus did most of his teaching and talking before the Resurrection. What we’ve been listening to and discussing the past few weeks is Jesus’s farewell speech, where he tries to make sure the disciples get all the biggest points of what he taught and modeled for them.

We go back to Jesus’s final words to his disciples, so that we might all take those things to heart, so that we might believe, live into, and spread the good news, as disciples of Christ.

In today’s reading, Jesus has just finished giving this last speech. And what he does here is heartfelt, crucially important, and a model for us whenever we face difficult times.

“After Jesus had spoken these things,” John writes, he looked up to heaven and prayed for his disciples. Jesus wanted them to know, even though he was going away, he is leaving them in the care of his Father.

“Christ Taking Leave of the Apostles,” Duccio di Buoninsegna, tempura on wood, Wikimedia Commons.

I want to look at a couple aspects of Jesus’s prayer here. First, he prays specifically for his disciples, his friends. He says:

“I am asking on their behalf, not on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those you gave me, because they are yours.”

We know Jesus to be the savior of the world, as we hear so often in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world…”… But here he’s not praying for the world, he is much more specific.

Praying this prayer for a world that is about to kill Jesus, using these words for a world that has rebelled against the way God intended things to be, wouldn’t make sense here. The disciples are the key to spreading the good news, to fixing things, to spreading God’s love. Jesus’s work in the world is being passed along—they are the ones entrusted with the right words, the knowledge of what needs to be done. Jesus is praying for his friends and the importance of what they have to do.

He knows he is leaving; he is not going to be there to protect them anymore, or to keep them in line; he knows what the world is about to do to him and he wants to keep them from scattering and giving up.

Jesus prays this prayer, out loud and in front of the disciples for their benefit, so they can see and hear him praying. In what he does, he is modeling something for them, which they are going to need, and he is showing them how close he is to the Father, which is how close they are going to need to be without Jesus there.

Jesus asks his Father to protect the disciples. And yet, look at what happened to many of them. They had difficult lives even after the Resurrection. Some were arrested, tortured, and a number of them were killed.

So I want to ask you a question: Did Jesus’s prayer work? Was it answered?

To get our minds around this, I want to talk about what it is to protect someone.

This is Mother’s Day weekend. Happy Mother’s Day to all the amazing moms here. You are so important in so many lives. When we think about protecting the way a mother might protect her children, we are talking about protecting them from harm.

My earliest memory of that kind of protection is when I was three years old. My favorite show was called “Emergency !”, which was about a Los Angeles Fire Department with one fire truck and an ambulance. I had a plastic fire helmet with the Emergency! logo on the front of it that I wore everywhere. I was obsessed with that show.


My cousin and I were playing in the neighbors’ yard next to the water where they had been building up the shoreline with rip rap, and they had a big pile of rocks and dirt. I remember standing on top of that pile, with my Emergency One! fire helmet on thinking I couldn’t be much cooler. We were throwing some chunks of dirt into the river and I wound up to throw as far as I could and tumbled down the pile, over the rip-rapped wall and into the river. I sank like a rock.

But my Emergency! helmet floated. To this day, almost 50 years later, I can look up from the bottom of that river and see that helmet floating. It wasn’t terribly deep, but it was over my head, and I couldn’t swim.

The next thing I knew there was a body breaking through the water, my Mom wrapped her arms around me and pulled me up and out of the river. She wasn’t right there with us, but she was nearby, she heard me tumble down the rock pile and looked and saw my helmet floating on the water.

She said she didn’t have any thoughts in her head, she just reacted, ran to the river, jumped in and pulled me out. For my part, I was a very grateful child: as she wrapped me in a towel and took me inside, I yelled at her for not calling the ambulance, because it would have been cooler if they had saved me.

That’s a mother protecting her child from harm. That’s a very clear and necessary kind of protection.

That’s not the kind of protection Jesus was asking his Father for. He knew that kind of protection didn’t exist for him or for his disciples in a world that had different priorities. They were doing something that was going to put them in harm’s way.

When Jesus prays for the disciples’ protection, he asks for two things:

  • Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.
  • I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but to protect them from the evil one.

He told them to abide in his love. He wants them to stay in that love, stay connected to God. Jesus knows that the good news, that the coming kingdom, depends on them—that the disciples are going to become His body and do the work of spreading the news to the ends of the earth, so that others might believe.

And he knows that there is pain and suffering, fear and distraction, and evil in the world—all kinds of things that could scatter the disciples.

With all these concerns on his heart, with everything on the line, knowing he is about to be arrested, hauled away, and killed, what does Jesus do?

He looks up to heaven, calls on his Father, and prays for his disciples. John gives us Jesus’s prayer in very theological way that is hard for us to make sense of. I wonder, to our ears, for our time, if it might have sounded something like this:

Dad, they know you. This crew you gave me, this rag-tag group of fishermen, tax collectors, and what all. You should see them, Dad. They might not always understand, but their hearts are in it, they are committed, they don’t give up. They are getting it. And they know it all comes from you. Everything that you’ve shown me, I’ve shown them. And they’re doing us proud.

I’m asking for them. Not for the world; the world who seem to come up with new and cruel and horrible things every day, the world that’s about to kill me… No, I’m asking for them, the ones you gave me, because they are yours.

I’m not going to be here anymore, but they are. They’ve looked to you through me, but I’m won’t to be here, I’m coming to you. I’m worried about them. I know there is a part of me that’s you, Dad, and there’s a part of me that’s like them, and that part of me is worried.

I’ve given them your word and the world hates them for it, just like it hates me, because I don’t belong to the world. The world. This place. This harsh, impossible, beautiful, incredible world. I’m not asking you to take them out of it—they aren’t ready to go where I’m going. But protect them from the evil one. We know what he can do. Keep them close to you and close to each other, that’s the only way this will work. And it has to work.

That’s what all this has been for, that’s why you sent me, that’s why I came, and now I am sending them out, just like you sent me. They can do it. I know they can. But they need your help, just like I do.

I’m setting myself apart, for them. Set them apart, Dad, in your truth. In your love. And it’s about more than them, it’s all those who will believe in me through their words—the people sitting in Christ Church Easton, 2,000 years from now—they won’t know you unless it’s starts with my disciples, my friends.

Dad, the world doesn’t know you. But I know you. And these who you gave me, they know you. And the way you have loved me, I’ve loved them. We’re all in this together. Keep them close to us.

Thanks, Dad. Love you.

Imagine the disciples watching and listening to a prayer like that. What an impact.

Sometimes the protection we need is to stay close to God. Life might take us through some rough places. A good friend who is a clergy person just shared with me his cancer diagnosis. He said, I know I’ve got to let the doctors do what they need to do and that I can’t control that. What I need to do is stay focused on God, stay close to God, through this.

We pray for healing, we pray for good outcomes, and we don’t always have control over those things. But praying, staying connected to and protected by God, gives us something to get us through life’s dangers no matter what happens.

That’s what Jesus wanted for his disciples. That’s what he wants for us.

I think his prayer worked.

Amen.

You are witnesses of these things

Background: At the healing service on Wednesday, April 10 and for the Zoom prayer service and discussion on Sunday, this is the text/basis for a homily and discussion we had on Luke 24:36b-48, where Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time after his Resurrection, per Luke’s account. (artwork: “Jesus’ Appearance While the Apostles are at Table,” by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255-1319))

“You are witnesses of these things.”

Today’s reading gives us Luke’s version of a story similar to what we heard from John’s Gospel last week. The disciples are gathered in a room and Jesus appears to them. In the course of their encounter, they go from being terrified and afraid, thinking they are seeing a ghost, to being witnesses, inspired and charged up to share their testimony.

How does this change happen?

Does Jesus make some rousing speech? Does he scientifically explain what happened to him?

He gives them his body. He says “look at my hands and feet. Touch me and see. That’s a line I want to let sink in for a bit.

Over the different Gospels we have heard Jesus say, “Follow me” and “Come and see,” now this is the most personal, most intimate invitation he could give, “Touch me and see.”

They are starting to come around, still not sure about all this—they know he died, there is no way this can be… Jesus looks around and says, “Got anything to eat?” And then eats fish to show them he’s legit.

I love the encounters with the risen Jesus in Luke—this story and the Road to Emmaus—there is a light-heartedness about Jesus, there is humor even in the serious work that he is there to do.

In light of the Resurrection, everything takes on new meaning. In the Road to Emmaus story, it’s just two disciples walking and Jesus comes upon them, and they walk and talk and he teaches them and then breaks bread with them, and their lives and hearts are changed. In a way that didn’t happen before. Things are different.

In today’s reading, for the disciples it is conversation, it is Jesus’s bodily presence, it is teaching, all things they have experienced before, but this is different. This changes everything.

I want to ask a question here and see what you think. Why does Jesus come back to his disciples? What’s his purpose in appearing to them and spending time with them?

To fulfill his mission; to do what he said he was going to do. To show them he is who he said he was; to show them that love conquers death.

It’s also this: to give them living and credible proof. To help them take the next step in their learning.

He is going to ascend and it is going to be up to them. His life, his love, his teaching, he is placing it in their hands to pass on to others.

“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,” … he goes back over what he told them before he was killed, but it all has a new significance; it means something different now.

Then he opens their mind to understand the Scriptures. Wow, that would be a lovely gift, wouldn’t it? Hey, Jesus, what does this mean? How do I make sense out of this? Like a phone-a-friend lifeline to Jesus.

In coming back, in appearing to the disciples, in teaching them, and being with them, in them touching him, Jesus says:

“You are witnesses of these things.”

If the disciples aren’t credible witnesses, it will never work. If they don’t believe, if they aren’t convinced and convicted, how will anyone else come to believe?

But not just credible witnesses, they have to be fired up, they have to be motivated, they have to want nothing more than to share their testimony, to share the good news. It has to be part of their core purpose.

Imagine if after Jesus leaves, the disciples are sitting on this amazing, life-giving story that can change the world, and they decide, “Okay, well, we’ve got this church here, a house church, and if anyone new comes in, we’ll tell them. That’s what it means to be a disciple, right—that we proclaim the word within the walls of our specific church, we celebrate Communion, we pray for others, and Jesus is happy, right?”

Jesus knows his work, his purpose, his life, his love for us hangs on the disciples becoming apostles—being sent out to spread the good news. So he supercharges them, gives them everything they need to succeed, including the Holy Spirit (that comes in Luke, Part II, Acts).

Let’s look at how Jesus gives them what they need in this story. He doesn’t come in and say, “Great to see you guys, would you please pick up your Bibles and turn to page 42 for today’s lesson.”

He shows them his scars, he says, “touch me and see,” he eats with them. He is vulnerable, intimate, and authentic. Explaining Scripture doesn’t come until later.


I love this quote from Debie Thomas in the book we studied last year, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She says:

“Maybe when the world looks at us to see if OUR faith is authentic and trustworthy, it needs to see our scars and hungers, too. Our vulnerability, not our immunity. Our honesty, not our pretenses to perfection. What would it look like for us to offer our stories of scars and graces, hungers, and feasts, in testimony to this world? How might our embodied lives become a way of love? Naming our hungers, widening our tables, sharing our scars and our feasts—what if THIS is practicing resurrection? Maybe more is at stake in a piece of fish, or a glass of water, or a loaf of bread, than we have imagined.”

Another question I want to ask you, and if it is something you feel like you have an answer for or want to talk about, wonderful, if not, ponder it over the week:

What is YOUR witness?

What is it from your life, your scars, your hunger, your passions, your relationships that might speak to others?

We are all different witnesses. The good news is the good news, but we connect to it in different ways, and we connect to other people in different ways. My witness, my testimony, is different than yours.

Part of this whole line of thinking came to me yesterday while I was skateboarding. I had been sitting at my desk for the afternoon, I needed to go to the grocery store, and there is a paved trail down next to Easton Point that goes across Papermill Pond, right on the way to Harris Teeter or Target. I wanted to stretch my legs.

And I got to thinking that the joy that I get from cruising on a skateboard, a joy I found when I was 13 and almost 40 years later is still there, is part of my witness. Writing is part of my witness. Discussing the Bible, laughing, asking questions, building friendships while wondering about Scripture, is part of my witness. Sitting outside in nature and feeling like a part of Creation is a part of my witness.

What things are a part of yours?

I want to mention one more aspect to this Resurrection story. Jesus is changed. The disciples are changed. Something has happened, they have received something from Jesus that has made them witnesses.

What is it and how can it help our witness? This is how Debie Thomas puts it:

“The resurrection is not a platitude or a line in a creed. The resurrection is fire in our bones, steel in our blood, impetus for our feet, a song of lamentation, protest, and ferocious hope for our souls. The resurrection is God’s insistence that we speak, stand, and work for life in a world desperate for fewer crosses, fewer graves, fewer landscapes littered with the desolate and the dead.”

This is the season of the Resurrection. This is the Easter season of new life. That power and love and energy is for us, it is supposed to be a part of our witness. Is it a part of yours?

Doubt and Faith

Background: This past weekend (April 6-7) was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The lectionary Gospel reading was John 20:19-31, which is popularly referred to as the “Doubting Thomas” story. I also preached on this passage last year and wanted to make sure to take it in a new direction. I am grateful especially to Debie Thomas and her book, “A Faith of Many Rooms,” which is quoted and referred to.

“Doubt and Faith“

It’s today’s reading where our friend Thomas earns the nickname that history and culture gave him: “Doubting Thomas.” And we are told not to be a Doubting Thomas.

I want to discuss whether doubt is a bad thing and whether in Thomas’s shoes, any of us might not do the same thing.

This is not the first time we meet Thomas in John’s Gospel. The first story he is a part of is the raising of Lazarus.

Mary and Martha send a message to Jesus that their brother Lazarus is sick, hoping that Jesus will come to heal him. Jesus famously waits a couple days before going to see them. And when he’s ready, he says to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

They know there are people in Judea who already want to stone and kill Jesus. Going back to Judea is exactly what they don’t want to do. They try to hash out whether this is a good idea and Jesus says, “Lazarus is dead, let us go to him.”

This is where Thomas pipes up and says to the group, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

If Lazarus is dead, and Jesus is walking straight into the storm and facing death head on, Thomas says, alright gang, let’s go die with him.

And off they go. Thomas has no fear and no problem going to die with and for Jesus.

Fast forward through John’s Gospel: there is the raising of Lazarus, Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem, then his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. Now the disciples are caught up in uncertainty, grief, and the lost feeling of what was going to happen now.

The story of the empty tomb, of Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Jesus there that we just heard last weekend on Easter, has just happened. It is evening on that same day, the first day of the week, and the disciples are locked in a room fearing the same fate that Jesus met might be waiting for them at the hands of the Jews.

Jesus appears to the disciples. This incredible experience. But Thomas isn’t there. He gets back after the fact. And the disciples all tell him, “We’ve seen the Lord,” he was here with us.

Thomas says, unless I see it for myself, unless I see HIM for myself, I will not believe.


Author Debie Thomas was born in India. Her father was a Christian minister there and their culture has a special relationship with the apostle Thomas.
In her new book, “A Faith of Many Rooms,” which we’ll have a few small groups reading and discussing, she has this to say about Thomas and his doubt:

“Cautious. Skeptical. Stubborn. Daring.”

“A man who yearned for a living encounter with Jesus—an encounter of his own, unmediated by the claims and assumptions of others. A man who wouldn’t settle for hand-me-down religion but demanded a firsthand experience of God to anchor and enliven his faith. To me, this speaks not only to Thomas’s integrity but to his hunger. His desire. His investment. He wasn’t spiritually passive. He didn’t want the outer trappings of religion if he couldn’t know its fiery core. He was alive with his longing.”

I don’t know about you, but I have never been able to just accept something that people tell me without finding out for myself. This didn’t make for an easy job for my parents. They came home once when I was 9 or 10 years old, to find me stuck in the mud in the middle of the creek behind our house at low tide. I didn’t think I would get stuck, despite people warning me. My mom’s boots are still at the bottom of the creek there.

Another time, my mom had to come extract me from the clay they dredged out of Town Creek in Oxford, which I walked into–waist-deep to see how far I could get.

As a teenager spelunking in John Brown’s Cave in Harpers Ferry, in the pitch black with headlamps, a friend and I climbed up a wall about 20 feet to see what it was like. It took a minor miracle for us to make our way back down.

My Mom’s boots are still under the water in that creek.


I grew up in the Episcopal Church, I was baptized and confirmed at Holy Trinity Church in Oxford, I attended St. James Episcopal School in Hagerstown for a time. As I got older, I kept at the periphery of church, I appreciated the teachings, I liked what this Jesus guy was all about, but I couldn’t make the leap from interested to invested.

I think I have always been Thomas when it comes to faith. I needed my own experience.

How does that happen? How do we find that kind of experience?

Let’s look at something that happens right after Thomas says he won’t believe unless he sees for himself.

After Thomas says he’s not on board, John writes: “A week later… his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them.”

A week has gone by, and Thomas is still there.

What does that tell us about Thomas? Even though he wasn’t ready to believe, even though he didn’t have the experience that the others had, he didn’t quit. He didn’t hang it up. He kept showing up. He was willing to give it time when he himself wasn’t feeling it.

What does it say about the disciples? They didn’t shun him. They didn’t ostracize him. They stood by their experience, they trusted Jesus, and they loved Thomas. They were willing to let things work themselves out.

Life goes on. The disciples stay together. Thomas keeps working through things. And a week later, Jesus comes back and gives Thomas the exact thing he asked for.

What do we learn about Jesus? He gives Thomas the experience that he needs to believe. He meets Thomas where he was and gives him his hands and shows him his side and says, “Do not doubt, but believe.” Thomas, man of his word, says, “My Lord and my God.” He believes.

What does that mean for Thomas? What does it mean for us to believe?

Here’s the thing about belief when it comes to faith. It sounds nice, it sounds reassuring: if you believe, you’re all set. If you believe, you’ll have eternal life. So how do we as Christians today show our belief? We go to church, meaning worship services. We take Communion. Maybe we wear a cross around our necks. If we’re on social media and someone says, “bet you won’t post the Lord’s Prayer,” we say, oh yeah, watch this… and post it… Hhhmm… that’ll show them.

I subscribe to the idea that if you want to know what someone believes, watch their actions. I think that’s what Jesus was and is banking on as well. If you want to know what the disciples did after their encounters with the risen Christ, go take a look in the Book of Acts. They risked their lives, they met in houses and walked and sailed hundreds of miles to win new followers of Christ. If that was a part of belonging to a church today, I think we’d all be in a bit of trouble.

One person whose journey isn’t outlined specifically in Acts is Thomas’s. Scholarship points to the idea that Thomas is who took Christianity to India. They have statues of him and monasteries and they hold that their Christian roots go all the way back to one of Jesus’s first disciples. A lot further than our roots in the United States go.


Debie Thomas outlines different stories that are associated with the apostle Thomas in India: the pared down version goes like this.

Thomas sailed to Kerala in 52 CE, so about 20 years after Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension–20 years after Thomas’s encounter with the risen Christ. He wanted to preach to the Jewish colonies that were settled near Cochin.

He was very successful, converting both Jews and Brahmins and he followed the coastline south, winning hundreds of new followers and believers of Jesus and establishing seven churches along the waterways of Kerala. He crossed over the land to the east coast near Madras.

He was so successful as a preacher and a community builder that he made the devout Brahmins in the region jealous and angry and they speared him to death in 72 CE.

For 20 years, Thomas worked with the other disciples around Jerusalem and the Middle East spreading the good news of Jesus. And for the next 20 years after that, he went to strange lands where he didn’t speak the language, where he was an outsider, where it was Thomas and the Holy Spirit and the communities of believers he helped build. Right up until the religious authorities killed him for it.

The apostle Thomas’s actions show how deeply he believed.

Debie Thomas asks this question: “What if doubt itself can be a testimony?”

She says, “If nothing else, Thomas assures me that the business of the good news–of accepting it, of living it out, and of sharing it with the world–is tough. It’s okay to waver. It’s okay to take our time. It’s okay to probe, prod, and insist on more… I need Thomas–doubter and disciple, agnostic and apostle–to show me what faith truly is.”

His doubt is honest. It is heartfelt. It is a part of who he was and part of the process of who he was becoming. Maybe you can see yourself in Thomas. Maybe doubt and questions are a part of your faith journey. They are still a part of mine. God can use our doubt as a starting point or to lead us further down the path he has laid out for us. As long as we don’t give up.

I wonder about Thomas and what his style of evangelism would have been. I picture him having a meal with a group of people who are eagerly listening to what he has to say. Except for one person sitting at the end of the table who has a raised eyebrow, shaking his or her head. Slow to accept, skeptical to believe.

I see Thomas smile, laugh a little, and say, “You’ve got doubts, huh? Me, too. Let me tell you a story about doubts and how they can be a part of faith.”

Believe

Lead in: I am in my second year of seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school. April 15-16, with a last minute switch, was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for April 16 was John 20:19-31, which most people know for “Doubting Thomas,” the disciple who won’t believe that Jesus has been resurrected until he touches Jesus’s wounds for himself. We are all a bit like Thomas. The reading is where Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time after his death.

“Do Not Doubt, But Believe”

I’m a big fan of John’s Gospel. On the one hand, he’s a bit like the Rodney Dangerfield of the gospels—not enough respect to get his own lectionary year like the synoptic Gospels; on the other hand, every lectionary year is made better because we have John peppered throughout them.

For John, “believing” is a big deal. He uses the word “believe” 98 times in his Gospel, always as a verb, as something active and dynamic. He tells us at the end of today’s reading that these stories are written that we might believe that Jesus is the Messiah and through believing have life in his name.

Today’s reading is John’s version of Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to the disciples. Remember, John didn’t write Acts, that was Luke, so we don’t get the Pentecost telling of the story here.

There are scholars who say that John’s Gospel is the one most likely to have originated with an eyewitness account. We read the author describing himself as being there at the crucifixion and later, on the beach with Peter and the others. There are details in John that we don’t find in the others.

Let’s look at two stories of the giving of the Holy Spirit. At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, he says that after investigating everything he wants to write an orderly account of all that went on, talking to everyone he can. Each Gospel sets out its witness to the good news of Jesus Christ, and I love Luke (he gives us the prodigal son, the Road to Emmaus, etc). But when I think humorously about the way stories get passed down over time, there is some part of me that thinks about Luke asking everyone for their recollection of Pentecost:

“And there was FIRE! Fire? Yeah, FIRE! It was intense! And then people were speaking in tongues, remember that? And people thought we were drunk, and Peter was like, noooo waaaayy, it’s only 9:00 in the morning…”

In Luke’s telling of the story in Acts, it is a public event, a spectacle.

In contrast, listen to John’s account:

“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “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.’”

Maybe it’s because I tend prefer being understated, but I love the simple, straightforward, intimate and understated way John gives us the Holy Spirit. No crowds, no fire, no speaking in tongues. Jesus breathed on them and gave them a new Spirit. A new life in Him. A life that has overcome death.

Does that sound familiar? This is from Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 7:

“then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”

I love that John sees what Jesus is doing and connects it back to the beginning (remember he starts his whole Gospel account with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”) John wants to make sure we don’t miss what’s happening. This is new life, that comes through Jesus, which is giving us a direct connection to God.

I get excited about the Holy Spirit.

But let’s backtrack to where the disciples are in the reading and what’s going on.

Jesus has been arrested, crucified, and was buried in a tomb. The disciples scattered, afraid for their lives. Just before today’s reading, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and found the stone rolled away, she ran and got Peter and the one whom Jesus loved (who we think of as John, the author) and they went in and found the tomb empty. And then the men left and went home. All Peter and John saw was the empty tomb.

Mary Magdalene stuck around, talked to angels, then encountered Jesus, who told her to go and tell the disciples, which she did. But none of them have seen Jesus for themselves yet. They might dismiss her story as being unbelievable story, saying she was overly excited at finding the tomb empty—she could have been hallucinating.

Now, they were hiding out together in a locked room, hoping not to be found or found out. As writer and pastor Frederick Buechner describes it:

“They had bolted the door and were listening for the dreaded sound of footsteps on the stair when suddenly Jesus was among them. He stood in their midst—always in their midst, this man, turning up when they least expected him—and told them to breathe his breath, his holy breath and spirit, so that they could go out into the world again and perform his holy work.”

6th century mosaic in the Church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna

Knowing that they are going to be scared out of their wits, Jesus’s first words to them are “Peace be with you.”

He reassures them. He shows them his hands and his side, so that they know it’s him and that this is real. And the disciples rejoiced. Of course they did. If there are scenes out of Scripture that you would want to be there for—this has to be one of them! This is massive. It’s transformative. It’s life changing. It’s death conquering.

Jesus gives the disciples what they need to believe. And then he gives them his Spirit and gives them work to do.

But Thomas isn’t there. The other disciples tell him what happened, but he isn’t having it. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hand and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

On the one hand, we can say, sure, everyone talks a big game when Jesus isn’t standing there, just you wait… But I think this is true to life. How many of us, when hearing friends tell us an unbelievable story, decide, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Even if it comes from people we trust, we still want proof. Thomas wants the same experience the others had.

So what does Jesus do? He comes back. He shows up again, just for Thomas. He gives Thomas what he needs to believe. Jesus doesn’t scold him, he is there for him and tells Thomas, “Do not doubt, but believe.”

Notice, Thomas doesn’t get kicked out of the club for doubting. That is one of the wonderful aspects of this reading—there is room in our faith for doubt. It is okay to want to see for ourselves. It’s okay not to believe just because everyone else tells you to. Jesus works with Thomas.

And Thomas believes; seeing is believing as they say. Jesus then delivers the showstopper of lines, a line so important to faith: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

That’s us. I don’t know about you—I haven’t encountered the bodily resurrected Jesus in the flesh. But I have come to believe. How?

Think of the work Jesus is asking the disciples to take on. To help people believe, when they haven’t seen him for themselves.

Here is Frederick Buechner again:

“The risen Christ is risen in his glory, but he is also Christ risen in the hearts of those, who although they have never touched the mark of the nails, have been themselves so touched by him, that they believe anyway. However faded and threadbare, what they have seen of him is at least enough to get their bearings by.”

Believe. What does that mean here? Is that an intellectual affirmation? Is it convincing ourselves and never doubting? Is this just a box we have to check off? I don’t think so.

For the disciples, their belief was foundational to the mission Jesus gave them. If they didn’t believe, what kind of witnesses would they be? If they don’t believe, why would anyone they meet want to believe?

Jesus’s life and love and good news are dependent on the disciples to continue to spread it out into the world. He was inviting them into an intimate, dynamic relationship with him.

And the same thing is true of us now. If people are going to come to believe in Jesus, it probably won’t be because they have had a bodily encounter with the resurrected Christ; it will be through the Holy Spirit, which is carried and passed on by the NEW body of Christ, the church, US.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in his book, “Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief,” talks about a young Jewish woman named Etty Hillesum. She was in her 20s when the Germans occupied Holland. She watched her world turn into an utter nightmare. She was sent to a concentration camp at Westerbork before being shipped to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

She wrote in her diary: “There must be someone to live through it all and bear witness to the fact that God lived, even in these times. And why should I not be that witness?”

Williams describes her attitude and commitment like this:

“She decided to occupy a certain place in the world, a place where others could somehow connect with God through her. She took responsibility for making God credible in the world. She took responsibility for God’s believability.”

What if THAT is what believing in God, believing in Jesus, means. That with and through our lives, we take responsibility for God’s believability. How many of us would say that we believe if that were the standard?

That’s what Jesus is asking of his disciples. But he doesn’t leave them on their own to do it, he doesn’t abandon them. He shows up. He brings them peace. He breathes his Holy Spirit into them.

The fact that we are gathered here in a church worshipping and loving Jesus, trying to understand his life and example, and bearing witness to the good news of his Resurrection says that the early disciples, with God’s help and the Holy Spirit, were up for the task.

I wonder: are we?

Let me give a brief witness. Over the past month, my daughter Ava has been in and out of A.I. DuPont Hospital, three times, first for surgery, then with multiple ambulance rides for seizures she couldn’t come out of. She’s home now and we’re hopeful she’ll be back in school this week and going to her senior prom next weekend. But epilepsy is challenging at times, and it’s been a rough, slow, frustrating go of things.

Not once going through it, have we, or I felt alone. Through so many text messages, phone calls, people checking in before or after classes, the school systems offering help, prayers, hugs, you name it–I have felt the Holy Spirit and God’s love at work through friends, through this congregation, through family, sometimes through strangers–volunteers at the Ronald McDonald House or, nurses, doctors, and people working at the Einstein Brother’s Bagels at the hospital, who can tell you are beyond tired this morning.

My experience is not unique. One of the things that touches my heart the most is to hear how people have shown up, how people have been there, how people have been LOVE in the lives of others. The way we love one another, even as Jesus loves us, can help make God believable for others.

We can see the Holy Spirit being God’s love in the world. We can be the Holy Spirit being God’s love in the world.

In the dark and confusing times that we are in the middle of in the world right now, can our belief, can our lives, can our love, be a witness for God’s believability in the world?

Yes, we can be that witness. Yes, God’s love, moving through us, through our belief, and our lives, can be credible in the world. That’s how the Holy Spirit works. No fire required.

Amen.

Our Iona Eastern Shore seminary class with professor, Fr. Dan Dunlap and guest presenter, Dr. Tom Long, one of the United States foremost preachers. That is how we started Saturday.

On Being Born

The last five years have been off the map. If you’d sat down with me on this day in 2013 and told me what the view in 2018 would look like, I’d have backed away slowly. And yet, they are some of the most important and beautiful years in shaping who I am, for better or worse.

One thing I remember clearly, when summer came and the Coast Guard contract we were working on ended, I was out of a job and searching for a direction. And I remember reading Frederick Buechner and having this overwhelming feeling that I should go to seminary; that there was something about a journey of faith that was key. I look back at Buechner’s words that I found again recently:

“Listen to your life. Listen to what happens to you because it is through what happens to you that God speaks… It’s in language that’s not always easy to decipher, but it’s there powerfully, memorably, unforgettably.”

I talked to a long-time friend and mentor who is an Episcopal priest and looked into things and sat and prayed on it, and then let it go when another Washington, DC, job working for the Coast Guard presented itself. I simply couldn’t imagine what life would look like or what would have to happen to end up working for a church.

There is no way I can do justice to the events that have taken place or the unexpected cast of characters who have been a part of what has happened since. There have been so many unexpected and undeserved blessings, even while there has been confusion, frustration, and letting go. Looking with hindsight doesn’t show the heartbreak, missteps and mistakes, letting people down, the questions, or being lost in the woods for stretches. We each have to own our scars and those we cause others. And we each have to get up each day and ask and answer, “Now what?”

In his book, “The Heart of Christianity,” Marcus Borg talks about being what resurrection means in our lives:

“…the process of personal transformation at the center of the Christian life: to be born again involves death and resurrection. It means dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being, dying to an old identity and being born into a new identity–a way of being and an identity centered in the sacred, in spirit, in Christ, in God.”

There is so much there. So much to live into, live up to, and I don’t always to the best job of it. But trying to focus and center and find each day, something of a new life, centered in God and the sacred. That feels like what I have been trying to get to since I was a teenager and started uncovering pieces of life and the world that I love.

There is something new and at the same time, there are the parts and passions and wonders and curiosities that abide and make us who we are, each of us a piece of a larger puzzle. And how we see things and how we see ourselves, they are and we are. I have been reading John O’Donohue’s “Anam Cara,” which goes on my very short list of books I’d take with me anywhere.

“There is such an intimate connection between the way we look at things and what we actually discover. If you learn to look at yourself and your life in a gentle, creative, and adventurous way, you will be eternally surprised at what you find… Each of us needs to learn the unique language of our own soul. In that distinctive language, we will discover a lens of thought to brighten and illuminate our inner world.”

“Anam Cara” shows how creatively and actively our inner world, our bodies, and the landscapes around us are all sacred and interconnected.

Each of the last five or six years, I have picked myself up a pair of shoes and a book for my birthday. Sometimes they have been trail running shoes, sometimes running shoes, Sanuks, or Vans. The books are more varied and tangential than I could even account for. The purpose is to invite in new adventures for the year: physical adventures on foot as well as intellectual adventures. Both make for adventures of the soul. This year it is trail shoes and Huston Smith’s autobiography, “Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine.”

Who knows what adventures year number 46 holds? I’ve learned I don’t know much. But I’m trying to get better as I go on about listening to my life and to hearing God speak. I am trying to use life up to this point, scars and all, to invite transformation and embrace new life ahead, centered in the sacred, centered in Christ, centered in God.

And I find life is generally better when I remember to get outside, with the dog 🙂