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| Easter 2015, by Bette J. Kauffman |
Each year Easter season brings us two lectionary treats.
First, we set aside the Old Testament for a few weeks and read from the Acts of
the Apostles.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the Hebrew scriptures. The poetry
of the psalms comforts me, no matter what is going on in my life. The challenging
words of the prophets—speaking God’s truth and crying out for justice—compel me
to action.
But our annual journey with the Apostles as they grappled
with the past—that is, the life, ministry and death of this man, Jesus—and brought
into being a new thing under the sun… this is an invaluable opportunity. We
read Acts not only to get in touch with our roots as The Church, but also to
assess our present.
How do we as The Church today compare with the earliest
Christians? Yes, we certainly have a more fully developed institutional church.
But are we in the world in the same transformative way?
And transformation is what the second of our Easter season
lectionary treats is all about. For our Gospel lessons, we hear again the
delightful but powerful stories of the encounters of the apostles and disciples
with the resurrected Jesus.
I call these stories “delightful” because the apostles are
so thoroughly and wonderfully human. We see ourselves in them and in their
reactions.
We today do not know what the resurrected Jesus looked like.
All we can know is that he did not look like Jesus the man of Nazareth the
apostles and disciples had known so well, had followed, lived with, been taught by, prayed with.
Mary, the first to see the resurrected Jesus at the tomb,
did not know him until he said her name. The disciples on the road to Emmaus
walked with him all afternoon, but did not know him until he broke the bread over dinner that evening.
And in today’s story, when Jesus the Christ appears through
locked doors (John 20:19-31, NRSV), his first words—as in so many of the appearance stories—are to
reassure. Peace be with you, he says.
They are frightened, as you and I would be if someone we thought was dead
suddenly appeared among us.
And then Jesus the Christ goes to some length to prove to
them that he is the one they know and love. Look
at my hands and feet, he says. It’s
me, it’s really me. And in today’s story, we with Thomas are invited to
place our hand in the very wounded breast of Jesus the Christ.
Jesus reassures his followers that he is one and the same, Jesus
the Son of Man whom they know and love, and who was crucified and laid in a tomb,
even
as
he comes to them transformed—the Risen Christ—a being they scarcely recognize
and react to in fear.
What a perfect set up for what comes next! Do you remember
what that is? Does Jesus appear to his followers just to comfort them, and
reassure them, and make them feel less bad for his suffering and death on the
cross?
No. Of course not. He comes to commission them. He comes to
them transformed, and he sends them out to transform the world.
As the
Father has sent me, so I send you, Jesus says. And then, that
wonderful and powerful moment, He
breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Miraculously, the apostles and disciples experience the
transformed Jesus, the Risen Christ. And by that experience, they are transformed..,
and they do what he commissions them to do. They change the world.
But… a couple of caveats. Pentecost is still a way down the
road and we know the Holy Spirit comes again with great power and might—so
powerfully and mightily and visibly that we call that day the birthday of The
Church.
But, importantly, the followers of Jesus are already in the
business of transforming the world when that happens. They are already out
there, preaching and teaching, healing and baptizing, and the Holy Spirit comes to
anoint what they are already doing—having been transformed from frightened,
scattered, grief-stricken followers into God's reconciling love in the world, transformed
by their encounters with the Risen Christ.
The second caveat is this. Yes, they transformed the world.
The world we live in would not exist, the vast expanse of Christianity would
not be, had it not been for that band of transformed followers of Jesus the
Risen One.
But the world we live in is yet far from the world
reconciled to God. The work begun by the transformed ones of so long ago is
unfinished. The Kingdom is at hand, but the world we live in remains broken,
horribly broken in life-draining ways.
At this point in writing this sermon, my mind was flooded with dozens
of ways to illustrate this final and most important point. I’ve chosen just
one, a personal one, that brought it home to me—again—in a powerful way.
I have type O-Negative blood. That makes me a universal
donor, meaning that virtually any other human who needs it can receive my
blood—or plasma or platelets. As a consequence, and in thanksgiving to God for
my own good health, I have been a regular donor all of my life.
I’m not looking for accolades here. Just stating some
background facts. Since I came to live in Monroe, I have gone to Lifeshare
about every two weeks and donated platelets. That is until about a year ago
when I began to struggle with keeping my hemoglobin high enough to donate.
Nothing seems to be wrong. It’s age, and the fact that I
choose seafood and veggies every time. So, this past Friday I was scheduled to
donate platelets, and being concerned that my iron would be too low, I took
myself out to Waterfront Grill for dinner Thursday night.. and had me a lovely
medium rare filet and steamed broccoli—both foods high in iron.
And… voilá! I passed the hematocrit test and donated
platelets for the first time in four weeks.
And then I went home, turned on the computer and… what do I
see? All the news about laws now being proposed to make sure the poorer people
among us, the ones who make our pizzas, flip our burgers, empty bed pans in our
hospitals and nursing homes, scrub floors or serve us in nice restaurants, and
do not make a living wage, must less enough to go out for a steak dinner… All
the news about laws to make sure they also cannot buy steak—or seafood, which
has its own merits in a healthy diet—with their food stamps, our stingy
charity.
And, BTW, many of these same people live in what are called
“food deserts,” where fresh broccoli is also a luxury. That’s an issue Interfaith
and Together Louisiana are taking up in the upcoming legislative session, and
you’ll be hearing more about it.
What a contrast to the Christian community described in our
lesson from Acts of the Apostles today (4:32-35, NRSV)! It was a community in which everything
was shared in common and no one was in need. In fact, judging from current
political trends and battles, we as a society abhor the economic system
described there.
We not only prefer our own system with its built in
inequalities, but we also often resist attempts to bend our system toward a
fairer, more equitable outcome. Worst of all, we acquiesce to demeaning and
punishing people just for being poor with laws such as the “no steak, no
seafood” law.
My friends, have we been transformed
by our encounters with the Risen Christ? Or are we far too quick to think the
resurrection is all about us and our personal salvation?
Like the apostles, we need reassurance. But if we understand
Easter as primarily an evacuation plan for the next life, we have missed the
point.
Jesus the Christ calls us to transform the world. Not the
next world, this world. Not heaven,
which needs no transformation. On earth. May
your will be done on earth, Jesus taught us to pray.
My prayer this morning is that our encounters with the Risen One transform us into The
Church that transforms the world with the reconciling love of God.
AMEN.
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