Second Sunday of Easter, Year C, April 3, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of life, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

This morning we have a trifecta of truly terrible theological ideas: the first in The Acts of the Apostles, a charge against high priests that they were the ones who had Jesus killed. Second, we have the idea of Jesus’ death as a blood atonement from John the Divine in Revelation. And to top it off, we have the story of “Doubting Thomas” from John the Evangelist (somehow bad to doubt?), which will be retold in a beautiful musical form later in Cantata 42. No doubt it will sound better than what I just read, but oy! You know, sometimes our lectionary gives choices – but not today. This Gospel reading is the only portion of all our four Gospels that gets read every single year on the Sunday after Easter, without rotation or options. That’s awfully heavy-handed, in my opinion. Perhaps the only good news about that is that many people take the Sunday after Easter off from attending church! But we’re here, so what are we to do?

In her introduction to her book, Texts of Terror, bible scholar Phyllis Trible writes about reading sad or bad stories in the First Testament (or Hebrew Bible), that might be helpful. She cautions that “to account for these stories as relics of a distant, primitive, and inferior past is invalid…the evidence of history refutes all claims to the superiority of a Christian era [or our post-Christendom era, I’d add]…to contrast an Old Testament God of wrath with a New Testament God of love is fallacious. The God of Israel is the God of Jesus, and in both testaments resides tension between divine wrath and divine love.” [1] Here are three Second Testament or New Testament stories that help make her point. Some scriptural ideas must be preached against; anti-Jewish material and blood atonement are two of those ideas.

Today’s Gospel reading is a little like watching a prime time serial program where the story leaves off at the end of one episode and picks up the next week only several hours later in the story. This passage begins, “later on the same day” – the same day that Peter has found the tomb empty, the same day that Mary has first mistaken the risen Lord for the gardener and then proclaimed the resurrection to the others. Later on the same day, the disciples were hiding behind locked doors because they were terrified.

The text says that they were afraid of the Jews – but of course, they were the Jews. I usually choose to translate Judaoi as Judeans (as opposed to Galileans), but this translation doesn’t fully address the problem that the Gospel text is revealing – that by late in the first century, the tensions between Jewish Jesus followers and Jewish non-Jesus followers had gotten beyond the breaking point. In his music notes, John Harbison alludes to Emmanuel Music’s past experiences with changing the text to replace Juden (Judeans or Jews) with Leute (people). John has told me the story of a time that a singer was so distracted by the edit, that instead of singing Leute (people), he sang Laute (lutes). Maybe some of you were here when the soloist sang that the disciples were behind locked doors for fear of the lutes. I think John made up his mind then and there that he would not make adjustments in the text.

So. The disciples were hiding behind locked doors because they were anxious, afraid, panicked, paranoid, terrified – you get the idea. The news of – in deed the experience of the empty tomb had done little to compensate for the trauma of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion or the extent of their grief. In spite of the barred door, in spite of their paralyzing fear, the patient and loving risen Lord made himself known to them time and again. And he didn’t just make himself known. He gave them three directives: The first was “Peace to you.” (“Peace to you,” is not just a holy way of saying hello. It is an instruction that Jesus gives three times. He really means it.) The second was, “As the Father [sic] has sent me, so I send you.” In other words, get out there. Stop hiding behind locked doors. Stop trying to keep yourselves safe. You have work to do. The third was, “Receive a holy spirit” (no definite article here and no capital letters). I like that instruction because it implies a choice. Apparently a holy spirit can be received or rejected. “Receive a holy spirit,” Jesus said and breathed on them.

Note that this is a very different story than the Acts version of 50 days later when a spirit of holiness was first experienced by the apostles like a great rush of wind, and divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and they began to speak in other languages, and the crowd thought they were drunk. This reception of a holy spirit happened on the day that the tomb had been found empty. So while, these two accounts of Jesus’ companions receiving a holy spirit cannot be reconciled, I also want to remind you that none of these events should be understood as describing “calendar” time. The resurrection and the inspiration didn’t happen in three days or fifty-three days, any more than the whole of creation happened in seven days or was destroyed by a flood in forty. These are mythical numbers, not so much descriptions of facts, as narratives about deep and essential truths about mystical experiences.

The point of receiving a holy spirit, according to John, seems to be to have the power to let go or release the sins of any. Sins, in the Biblical sense, are departures from doing the right things. If you let them go, they are let go. Our English translation uses the word forgive, which is far down the list in the dictionary definition of the word – it’s release, let go, send away. If you let go of behaviors that miss the mark, they have been let go. If you hold on to them, they are held, carried. This is a description of how it is when you have a holy spirit: you can let things go or carry them around with you. (The thing is, they get really heavy.)

So what about Thomas, patron saint of Episcopalians? Mark Davis, in his Greek translation blog, leftbehindandloving [2] it, points out that the text says, Thomas “was no longer with them.” It wasn’t just that he had gone out to run some errands, rather, there’s a sense that he had left the community. Perhaps this is a story of how the disciples encouraged Thomas to rejoin them. He was willing to return but not to believe unless he saw for himself. Eight days later, in other words, after a complete cyle of time, the same length of time that it took for God to create the heavens and the earth, Thomas got what he wanted. But honestly, I think it took a while. There’s really nothing here that portrays his desire negatively. Jesus loved him. Jesus showed up for him.

What Jesus says to Thomas is, “do not become an unbeliever but a believer,” or “do not become unbelieving but believing.” It’s ongoing and incomplete; it’s about becoming – a process. [3] After Thomas’s response, “My Lord and my God,” what follows is not necessarily a question. Remember, there’s no punctuation in ancient Greek. The words say, “you have seen me and have believed. Blessed (or fortunate) those who have not seen and believed.” Both are authentic, legitimate, viable ways of becoming believing – some see and some don’t. The late historian, Jaroslav Pelikan is reported to have offered this bit of wisdom just before he died: “If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen – nothing else matters.” [4] The important thing, according to the Gospel of John, however you get there, is to have life in the name of Jesus the Christ, child of the Holy One. That is the kind of life that is full, full of compassion, full of right-relationship, full of service to others, full of joy, full of love: fullness of life

Twentieth century Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, wrote a beautiful poem about what it’s like when any of us is not living fully. When we are not living fully, we are dying slowly, he says, which is what those followers of Jesus were at risk of doing when they were locked in a room because of fear. Listen to Neruda’s poetry

You start dying slowly
if you do not travel,
if you do not read,
If you do not listen to the sounds of life,
If you do not appreciate yourself.

You start dying slowly
When you kill your self-esteem;
When you do not let others help you.

You start dying slowly
If you become a slave of your habits,
Walking everyday on the same paths…
If you do not change your routine,
If you do not wear different colours
Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.

You start dying slowly
If you avoid to feel[ing] passion[s]
And their turbulent emotions;
Those which make your eyes glisten
And your heart beat fast.

You start dying slowly
If you do not change your life when you are not satisfied with your job, or with your love,
If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain,
If you do not go after a dream,
If you do not allow yourself,
At least once in your lifetime,
To run away from sensible advice. [5]

Let’s choose once again to receive a holy spirit – to be filled with a holy spirit – and live fully rather than dying slowly. Let’s live fully. Let’s proclaim in our words and by our actions that, Christ is risen.

← Back to sermons page