Deacon Pete's sermon Easter 2 Yr A April 27, 2014

Nicknames are a funny thing.  And, in my family, we are experts on nicknames, all of my father’s siblings were called by names they were not given at birth.   Our history abounds with nicknames:  Wrong Way Corrigan, “Babe” Ruth,  “Wild Bill” Hickock,  Al “Scarface” Capone, “Ike” Eisenhower, “Red” Skelton…Sometimes nicknames are given fondly, sometimes with gentle sarcasm and sometimes as a description of the person’s true nature.
That leads us to today’s Gospel, the gospel of “Doubting” Thomas.  We know little of Thomas other than this episode.  His name comes from the Aramaic “Toma”, meaning twin.  And indeed, Thomas could be said to be our twin.  For in his doubts, his questions, and his concerns Thomas mirrors us,  here,  today.
“When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week” some 2000 years ago the disciples were locked into a house, frightened and unsure of what had happened and of what would happen to them.  They didn’t know what Mother Cathy reminded us of last week, that Easter is not the end, Easter is the beginning.  For the disciples, it certainly looked like everything was over; they had given up friends, families and homes to follow Jesus and now, all that they had hoped for was in ruin.  Not only was their future in question, they must also have been feeling pretty discouraged about their behavior these past few days.  After all, they had failed Jesus in some very large ways.  Peter had denied Him three times and all except “the disciple Jesus loved” had deserted Him while He hung on the cross.
They know that the tomb is empty, but “where is He”?  They had forgotten the things that Jesus said to them earlier, before He went to Gethsemane. “A little while and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me” (John 16:16-18) and “You will have pain but your pain will turn into joy.  So you have pain now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” (J 20-22).
Thanks be to God, Jesus doesn’t stop for locked doors.  And, He doesn’t come in anger or judgment.  He immediately offers them peace.  At this point, the disciples fall into the “believers” category, they believe that the man they have followed cured the sick, raised the dead, made the blind see and the paralyzed walk, but they don’t “know” Jesus.  They don’t “know” that Jesus has defeated death once and for all, they don’t know that they are about to experience His risen body, they don’t know that they are going to be given the grace, the strength and the power to do what Jesus has appointed them to do: “go and bear fruit, fruit that will last”.
Jesus breathes on the disciples and they are given the gift of the Holy Spirit.  It is then that they move from “believers” to “knowers”.  And they make this leap in the midst of their fear, pain, doubt and confusion.
When Jesus tells the disciples that the sins they will forgive will be forgiven he is talking about unbelief, the refusal to “know” God.  He is not giving them some special power to decide whose sins will be forgiven and whose will not, He is really laying out for them what it means to be sent, to make known the love of God that Jesus Himself has made known.  People who come to know Jesus will be released from their sin.  If the disciples fail to go and tell, fail to witness, then the people will remain stuck in unknowing.
Thomas isn’t really any different than the other disciples.  Like them, he too has been a ‘believer’ but not a ‘knower.  He wasn’t in the garden with Mary Magdalene and for some reason Thomas is not with the disciples at the beginning of this story, and so Easter comes a week later for him, when Jesus again appears in the house.  Thomas gets his Easter in the way that many of us get it.  He begins to ‘know’ when he brings his questions, his doubts and his concerns to God.  He wants to see for himself, he wants to touch.  He needs his own encounter with the risen Lord before the story will be real to him, before he can trust the story.
Thomas doesn’t take ‘knowing’ lightly.  If this resurrection story is true, everything changes. No one gets to go home, to go back to their boats or their farms or their shops.  No one gets to go back to their hatred or prejudice or fear.  No one gets to hate their neighbor or even to ignore their neighbor.  No one gets to look out for himself or herself at the expense of others.  No one’s dignity is secure if everyone’s dignity is not seen and honored.   If Jesus is indeed resurrected, then the disciples will have to get to leave the house, stop hiding and get to work.  They will have to get busy doing the work of being Jesus in the world, and so will we.   And, that’s what Mother Cathy meant when she said Easter is only the beginning.
Thomas turns down the Lord’s offer to put his finger in his wounds, to reach out his hand and touch the Lord’s side.  Thomas turns Jesus down because right then and there Thomas knows, and he responds “My Lord and My God”!  Knowing is like that:  unpredictable and passionate, a gift from an unpredictable and passionate God.
The Gospel ends oddly:  “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book”.  Aren’t you curious?  Doesn’t it mean that there is more to Jesus than we can ever find written, even in the pages of Holy Scripture?    Christ is alive! And Christ’s work can never be confined or limited to pages and creeds.  As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (J3:8). God’s spirit set the disciples free, and it sets us free; it gives us the grace, the courage and the energy we will need for the adventures ahead. It turns us from mere ‘believers’ into ‘knowers’.   It empowers us to fulfill those Baptismal promises we made just last week and it enables us to be Christ for the world.  Amen.

Easter Day 2014

+Alleluia He Is Risen!
Alleluia Jesus is Alive!
Alleluia the strife is o’er!
Alleluia, Easter has come again!
This is really big news for us, but for a lot of people across the world, the mystery of the incarnation, the miracles of Jesus’ ministry, the laments of Lent, the emotional journey through Holy Week holds little or no meaning. As a matter of fact the walk to the empty tomb was pretty lonely for those of you who attended our Holy Week offerings--- most of us skip Holy Week all together! Most of us prefer the new life of resurrection over the inevitable death that leads to this glorious day.

 So, what is the big deal? What do these shouts of Alleluia REALLY mean? What does this account of events over 2000 years ago in a land half way across the globe mean for us, here, in 2014? In Buffalo NY?  At the Church of the Good Shepherd and the Church of the Ascension?
Alleluia. What DOES it all mean?
 Well, to understand—I mean to really wrestle with this question, we need to look back. Back to that breaking dawn 2000 years ago, on a hill just outside of town, when Mary Magdalene—so long misunderstood and misrepresented---screwed up her courage and went to finish the anointing she began three days before..for the very least she could do for this man she loved, this God she revered, this leader she followed, was to give him a proper burial.
 And so through the lightening sky of the First Easter morn, she walks out of town and up Calvary’s hill to The Tomb.
 It was a foolish mission—after all, the tomb had been sealed—she’d watched Joseph of Arimathea roll the stone himself. But, Mary soldiered on, not because this made sense, but because she was compelled, driven, drawn to that tomb—against all common sense, against all reasonableness, against all propriety, Mary went. She saw. And She told.
Mary believed.
Mary wondered.
Mary went.
Mary saw.
Mary told.
Yes, Mary believed.
 THIS is what it all means. This is what we’re called to do. It’s in this—the emulating of Mary of Magdala—where we find the meaning of these alleluias, the meaning of this Easter Sunday come again:
Mary believed. All the Mary’s did—you see in all of the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection one thing is clear: the men—Peter, James, John and countless others fled.
They left. They ran. They denied. They hid.
They even betrayed.
But the women—Mary, the mother, Mary of Magdala, Mary Clopas, sister of Mother Mary, Salome and others unnamed,  stayed. From the foot of the cross to the mouth of the tomb, they stayed. They watched, they witnessed, they waited, they wondered.
They believed.
Against all sense and against all reason they believed. The men thought theirs was a fool's errand. And , truth be told, so did the women themselves, yet, they had to do it…they couldn’t help themselves!...and so they went, to do what women have been doing for millennia: they did what needed to be done while the men hid and denied and argued, the women got to work.
They took care of business.
 And right there is the answer to the skeptic's question of “what’s the big deal about this He is Risen stuff? Who cares?
The meaning of Easter right  here and now, in 2014, in Bflo NY, in this church on this Easter morning is this:  we need to take care of business; the business of the empty tomb.
We need to follow the mandate Jesus gave us around the dinner table on that very first Holy Thursday—we are to do unto others as Jesus did unto us: we are to Love as we have been Loved.
 You see, the empty tomb isn’t just about a miraculous resurrection.
The empty tomb is about going and telling, going and doing, going and being.
Jesus tells Mary—“don’t hold onto me: go and tell my brothers”—
Go and Tell. Go and Show.
 So, my friends, I have news for you: Easter isn’t the end, it’s the beginning.
By virtue of Jesus’ death and resurrection, by virtue of our Lord’s mandate to love others as we’ve been loved, we must follow Mary’s example.
We must go and see.
We must believe and tell.
We must do what needs to be done:
Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted.
We must challenge the status quo, we must ask the tough questions, we must pursue righteousness.
We must, above all else, demand dignity for every single human being , no exceptions.
Because when we do that, we’re loving as we’ve been—as we are---loved.
Because when we do that we’re going and seeing, we’re believing and telling—
 we are doing what must be done.
Alleluia.
The Lord is Risen , indeed.+
[rerun from 2012]

Easter Vigil 2014

+ Several years ago, a 9 year old girl asked me why we go through Holy Week every year. After all, she said, we know it works out in the end! Of course we do know how the story ends and tonight we stand at the dramatic and glorious climax of the Holy Week Drama—an empty tomb, a risen Christ—but, as I told that young lady a few years ago---we must walk through the drama of Holy Week each and every year because although the story doesn’t change, we do. We need the reminder, we need the journey. To paraphrase a history professor I had years ago, why does history repeat itself? Because people change. We need the same old story to guide us in the new varied and divergent paths our lives take. We change, God doesn’t. We forget, God remembers. We stray, God remains steady.
And so we journey….from the triumphal march into Jerusalem, to the loneliness and despair of the garden, the bitter trial, the agony of the cross, the silence of death and finally, the joy of resurrection. What a walk!
Tonight we heard the story of salvation. From the first glimmer of new light we heard how God has, always and forever, saved us from our darker selves. From the Red Sea to the dry bones, from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, from Gethsemane to Calvary, from life to death and life again, God has reached out to us and for us.
Through the miracle of Easter we’ve been given, in clear and certain terms, A New Life in Christ. Well, more specifically, tonight we've been reminded of the new life in Christ given to each of us at baptism. In a few moments, we'll renew those baptismal vows, we’ll be reminded that we’re marked, sealed as Christ's own. Forever. Then, strengthened by this knowledge we’ll go out from here committed to seeing Christ in all whom we encounter.
Why do we do this every year? Why must we repeat the history of the past two thousand years, year in and year out? Because we get lost. Because we forget. Because throughout life we all experience our own personal Holy Weeks, our own moments of doubt, despair, loneliness and fear.
I tried to tell that 9 yr old this; that her life will have ups and downs and that by remembering the lessons of Holy Week, she'll be better equipped to deal with the peaks and valleys of life, I hope she remembers it.
So, my brothers and sisters in Christ, what has Holy Week taught us?
What does this journey, from Bethany to Jerusalem , from Caiphas' prison to the hill at Calvary, from denial to doubt, from cross to tomb, from the death of Jesus back to life again,  teach us?
Palm Sunday: triumph has different meanings. I don’t think anyone really knew what to expect when Jesus marched into Jerusalem. No doubt many of the disciples thought that in Jerusalem, Jesus would topple the civic and religious structure of the day. I’m not sure any of them thought victory could come from the cross and the tomb. We cannot expect that the victory of  life will always look how we think it will. Sometimes victory comes swaddled in rags, born in a barn and killed like a common criminal.
Maundy Thursday. It’s important to take time for fellowship. Sit with family and friends—break bread together. The bonds formed over the dinner table are fierce and will hold, come what may. Sometimes, words are not needed. Sometimes those we love simply need someone to sit with them, to bear witness to the pain they are enduring. We can’t take pain away from others, but we can be a silent witness. My friends, never underestimate the power of your presence.
Good Friday: There will be times when our beliefs will be challenged, when we'll  be tempted to deny what we believe to be true and right because it isn’t popular or it’s too scary to stand up for what we believe. Folks, stand up for what is right as best you can, and when you falter-- and we all falter-- remember that God stands at the ready, waiting for you—for all of us-- to come to the home of God, where forgiveness always reigns.

Holy Saturday. Where is God?
There are days when we feel utterly alone and bereft. Know that deep within that sadness, at the very bottom of the well of loneliness there’s a small still voice weeping with us and for us, sharing in our pain. You may not feel it, but know that it is there and that you can count on it. None of us is ever alone, no matter what.
Easter—the Resurrection— Just as quickly as we find ourselves in the depths of despair we will be relieved and released from the pain. Suddenly it will be gone. The sadness will lift and joy will again reign. That's the journey of Holy Week, it's the journey of our lives---we will have ups and downs. We'll have our share of Easter joys and Good Friday losses. But---and this is the most important lesson any of us can take from our Christian journey----Holy week always ends in Easter, Darkness always gives way to light, and sin always loses out to grace and truth and love. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia ---The Lord is Risen Indeed!+