This morning, it was a case of a sermon in two parts. The initial section commented on Thomas' reputation, making use of the cartoon further below, and upon the ups and downs of faith - and that faith was something that was always in motion. It ended with the following reflection written by Roddy Hamilton:
Every day is Easter
When Thomas touched the wounds
and set himself free
it was Easter day
When Peter’s three “yes’s” to Jesus
finished his three denials
it was Easter day
When Mary ready to embalm the dead
ran in fear from the empty tomb
it was Easter day
When the disciples looked from afar
at a breakfast of fish on the beach
it was Easter day
When Emmaus became synonymous
with welcome, and the breaking of bread
with strangers
it was Easter day
When Paul was blinded by the light
and recognised the voice niggling in his head
it was Easter day
When the hungry are fed at the table
the same table as the rich
it is Easter day
When weapons are beaten to ploughshares
and peace is a word to be shouted
it is Easter day
When the stranger is welcomed in community
and the lonely are restored to relationship
it is Easter day
Roddy Hamilton
SERMON pt 2/
Happy Easter: Christ has risen –
he has risen indeed, alleluia!
Earlier, I said that every day is Easter.
And certainly, although we celebrated Easter Sunday last week,
in a pretty all-singing and all-dancing way,
we’re still very much in the season of Easter.
So, at least for the next few weeks,
you’ll be hearing some of the stories of people who met with,
who experienced first-hand, the resurrected Jesus.
And this week, we meet the disciples –
and particularly, Thomas, in a story that moves from Easter day,
through to the following Sunday.
It must have been disconcerting that first Easter Sunday.
Early in the morning, the women had gone to the garden,
where Jesus’ tomb was –
where Jesus’ body was...
or, so they thought.
Distress, fear, and then, wonder,
as they discover
the stone rolled away,
the empty tomb,
and messengers proclaiming:
‘He is not here: he has risen.’
Mary Magdalene races back to tell the strange news to the other followers.
Peter and John race to see for themselves,
then head back to the upper room where the disciples have all gathered.
Meanwhile, Mary has also gone back to the garden
and meets the gardener, who turns out to be the risen Lord.
He tells her to go and tell the others.
Essentially, the first person to preach the gospel is a woman.
That first Easter Sunday morning has been a busy, unsettling one.
Dare the disciples hope, as they sit in their locked room,
that the impossible news is ... possible?
Dare they think, behind the firmly shut door,
that the unbelievable...can be believed?
Morning turns to afternoon, turns to evening.
And still the disciples are there, in that room –
with that closed, and firmly bolted, door.
Apart from our friend, Thomas,
the rest of Jesus’ friends are clearly going nowhere any time soon.
Perhaps as they’ve talked and talked of the morning’s news.
Perhaps as they’ve pondered every tiny detail, they’ve fallen into the paralysis of analysis.
The sit, they talk, and they don't go anywhere.
So, Jesus comes to them.
Jesus walks into that locked room and begins to open their minds –
if not totally blow their minds.
And, in the process,
somehow, picking over the little bitty details don’t seem as important,
as they encounter the light of the One
who is the Light of the World,
and who bids them to follow him,
to walk in the light,
to walk the way of peace,
to walk the way of forgiveness,
to walk the way of faith –
with all its ups and downs.
We know the other part to that first Easter evening.
At some point, Thomas comes back, and finds his friends suddenly alive, transformed.
They talk of having seen Jesus.
And he, ever the realist, won’t accept the impossible possibility of resurrection.
As they have seen it for themselves, so too, not unreasonably, Thomas refuses to believe until he has seen Jesus.
A week passes.
And there they are:
still in that upper room,
still with the door firmly closed,
the lock securely bolted.
What have they been doing all that time?
Seriously?
All, apart from Thomas, have now seen Jesus;
have been amazed;
have felt the flutterings of the Spirit
as Jesus breathed upon them
and spoke words of peace.
Yet, they seem stuck.
Maybe they’re still so stunned, they can do nothing else.
Or, maybe they’re wondering just what it is that they’re supposed to do.
Will Jesus come back with instructions?
We don’t know what keeps them there behind closed doors.
But, again, if they won’t go out, Jesus will come in:
locked and bolted doors are child’s play
to the One who overcame death,
and opened the door of the tomb.
Jesus seeks out Thomas,
and that pragmatic, practical realist
now has to broaden his ways of thinking,
widen his understanding –
open his mind to the radical reality of the resurrection.
It’s not long until these followers of Jesus
will fling open the doors of that locked room
and go out seeking to transform the world
with the message of God’s love,
with the message of the good news of life.
And Thomas ends up travelling far.
According to legend, he travels to India, telling the story of Jesus along the way,
and eventually settles in Kerala, planting churches from about the year 50.
He reputedly dies there around 72AD.
No longer stuck in particular ways of thinking,
no longer stuck behind closed doors,
Thomas’ faith transforms him,
moves him, halfway across the world,
to witness to the resurrection:
to tell the story of the impossible,
made possible.
Sometimes, we get stuck:
sometimes we’re like the disciples in that securely locked room:
for whatever reason, we find ourselves not really going anywhere fast.
Sometimes, we add into that mix, an added dash of Thomas’ pragmatic, practical realism,
forgetting that his particular story ends with the transformation to an opened mind and heart:
faith in motion.
Like Thomas,
like the other friends and followers of Jesus,
we are called to be a people in motion,
for faith is not static,
hey, faith can even move mountains.
Faith works best when it’s not kept locked in a room behind a bolted door...
And, as we see in the gospel reading,
if closed doors can be opened by Jesus,
even locked hearts and bolted minds can be opened by him.
Faith moves us from being locked into death and being open to life –
to entertaining possibilities of the resurrection:
of new life,
of a full life,
of a life lived authentically in the here and now;
and faith opens up the possibility of life and hope to others around us,
and around the world.
As Jesus breathed his peace upon his disciples,
so he is the One who breathes his peace into us;
who gives us strength, and courage,
and dares us to move towards hope;
who bids us follow him;
who sends us out into the world;
who calls us to be his witnesses
to life in all its fulness;
to love in all its transforming glory;
and to tell the story of the impossible,
made possible,
for, with God, all things are possible.
Happy Easter: Christ has risen –
he has risen indeed, alleluia!
For now, every day is Easter.
Let’s pray:
God of life, in the wake of Easter,
may we ride a wave of irrepressible hope
rising from the deep,
following the trajectory of love over
the turbulences of our living and
through its currents.
May we be open to joy,
and may we sense Your presence
hovering ever with us—
ever speaking new creation—
ever calling us into possibility. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hi - thanks for visiting.
We're always happy to receive comments, however,
we do moderate them to avoid spam.