Pentecost 2024B - "Somethings Happening Here"

 

Acts 2:1-21

There is something happening here

What is is ain’t exactly clear

Stop, children, what's that sound?

EV'rybody look what's goin' down

Those words from the late ‘60's protest song by the group Buffalo Springfield could perfectly sum up what was going on inside and outside of the house on that first Pentecost for whenever and whatever we think of this day we think of it as a noisy event.

The disciples may have been behind locked doors but the city, Jerusalem, was teeming with visitors.  There was a lot going on. 

It was a holiday weekend, and the city was filled with people from all over the place. 

Many of them were visiting Jerusalem because it was Shavuot, the Jewish Festival of Weeks, and devout Jews were required by Jewish law to come to Jerusalem to celebrate. Shavuot was the marking of seven weeks from Passover, and the remembrance of Yahweh giving the Torah, the law, to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  But not all of the people in Jerusalem that day were Jews, because it was also a holiday in the way that holidays bring families and celebrations, travel and obligation into our lives, and lots of worshippers, merchants, and travelers joined the regular population of Jerusalem to celebrate the holiday.1

 Yet, there was something going on that might have been hard to hear over the noise of the city.  We might have had to strain our ears to hear it.  “Hush, children, what’s that sound?”  It was the sound of the wind. 

We, who live in Chicago know what windstorms are like.  The trees bend; hats are blown off; umbrellas go inside out; but we soldier on.  We put our shoulders to the gale and move forward as best we can.

But something was happening here that couldn’t be fought against.  What we have in this moment was the movement of something bigger, something greater, it was the untamed movement of the Holy Spirit.

Now I know that we Lutherans can be a bit uncomfortable when it comes to this movement of the Holy Spirit business.  We like things done “decently and in good order.”  If the Holy Spirit would like to work its way into our worship, we would ask that it submit its ideas into the church office by Monday, Tuesday at the latest, so we can find a proper place for it in the bulletin.  We are wary of any sudden movement of the Holy Spirit because it seems be dangerous when it causes people to act in ways that seem, just a little out of control.

Whenever we think of a Pentecost moment, or having the gift of the Spirit we usually envision what Timothy J. Nelson, describe in his book Everytime I Feel the Spirit.

The congregation was very quiet during the Scripture reading and remained quite still for the several minutes until Reverend Dayton set out her theme and established her rhythm. Then she moved out from behind the pulpit ... and the people started to come alive. It happened gradually. At first one person in the choir stood up.  Then more choir members stood, and then people in the congregation started standing up, until after several minutes the whole choir and the congregation were on their feet.  The drummer tossed a drumstick into the air and caught it again with a flourish. The organ and drums started chiming in during response times building in volume and emphasis... One man in a black suit and red shoes started running to the front of the center aisle, pointing his finger, then running back to his seat. Several woman began to shout in earnest, moving out to dance ... in front of the pulpit. One woman ... began jumping up and down on both feet like a child on a pogo stick.  After about half-a-minute she ended up prone on the floor... The energy level began to subside and the service continued with the hymn of meditation.2

 And we think incense, some stage smoke, bubbles and strawberries in sparking cider are special and really way out there.

That was the response of the original onlookers on that first Pentecost when their attentions was drawn away from the noise of the city to the cacophony coming from behind the locked doors where the disciples were. Some of the bystanders make fun of what was going on believing that those inside and making such a racket were “three-sheets-to-the-wind-in-a-gale.”

What the crowd couldn’t deny was that something was happening here and what was happening was pretty important.  People were hearing about Jesus in ways they could understand. 

“The miracle in Acts,” says Dr. Greg Carey of Lancaster Theological Seminary, “is every preacher’s fantasy. The miracle resides not with the speaking of the disciples but in the hearing of the crowd. They hear the gospel in their own languages. This is what we all want: through the work of the Spirit to communicate with every person in a language particular to that individual.”3

That was the job of the church in it’s infant moments and it is still the job of the church now.  Our job is too present the gospel in such a way that it is interesting to people, moves people, engages people.  This is especially important now, more than ever, because Tim Alberta reminds us in his wonderful new book, The Kingdom, The Power, And the Glory, of something we all know.

In 1991, according to the Pew Research Center, 90 percent of Americans identified as Christian, while just 5 percent called themselves religiously unaffiliated. Thirty years later, the collapse was staggering: 63 percent of Americans identified as Christian and 29 percent called themselves unaffiliated.4

In a recent Christian Century article, reflecting on the goings on in the United Methodist Church, Dr. William H. Willimon former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University and Bishop of the Alabama Conference wrote: “Too scary to mention were the massive church attendance decline and the rapid greying of the denomination. United Methodists are 90 percent white, and 62 percent of them are over age 50.”5

It is more than likely that same can be said for the ELCA.

That is not good news but it presents a challenge. 

“Our challenge is to make friends with {the Holy} Spirit – to listen for that voice ... in our midst” and help others to hear it too.  To tell about Jesus in such a winsome and winning way that others will look at us and our churches as say to themselves, “something is happening here.” 

[T]hat is our challenge—to be friends with that spirit—to be open to the power of the Holy Spirit—to allow that spirit to challenge our human spirit—to live believing that that Spirit can change our lives—transform our lives—as individuals and as a congregation. Our charge is this. . . to live as if anything is possible by the power of the Holy Spirit—to believe it and to live it—to live in full anticipation and confidence that Pentecost is a moment of the past and of the present and of the future.6

Like the disciples, every day you and I stand on the edge of something. And today, Pentecost, is the day that we collectively stand on the edge of all we can do and be as the church in the world. It will be painful. We do not know now what we will know in another two years, or 2000 years, but be bold we must. The dream of healing, hope, justice, peace, beloved community is too important to shrink back to the familiar. 

    In other words: it’s Pentecost. The wind is blowing; the fire is burning...”7

Once again “something is happening here.  What it is ain’t exactly clear. Stop, children, what’s that sound?”

It just might be the Holy Spirit. 

 ________________

1.  Amy Butler Bass, “If We Knew Then...,” A Sermon for Every Sunday, May 12, 2024, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/.

2. Timothy Jon Nelson, Every Time I Feel the Spirit: Religious Experience and Ritual in an African American Church (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2005), 145 

3. Greg Carey, “Commentary on Acts 2:1-21,” Working Preacher, November 11, 2020, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/day-of-pentecost-2/commentary-on-acts-21-21-12.

4, Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (New York, NY: Harper, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2024), 96.

5. William  H Willimon, “Missed Opportunities at the UMC General Conference,” The Christian Century, May 16, 2024, https://www.christiancentury.org/features/missed-opportunities-umc-general-conference.

6. Dana Ferguson, “Past, Present, and Future.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, May 23, 1999.

7.     Bass, loc.cit.

AscensionB - "Witnesses of the Resurrection"

 Acts 1:1–11 and Acts 1:15–17 & 21–26

Some of the best summer evenings of my essentially wasted childhood were spent sitting in the screened-in porch of our backyard reading Mad Magazine.

For those under the age of 40 Mad Magazine was to your parents and grandparents what “The Simpsons” and “South Park” is to you. {Just saying that, I worry that even those references might be dated and make me seem older than I am, which is, after all, quite old.} 

When the magazine stopped publishing a print edition in favor of an online version even the staid and sophisticated New Yorker took notice: “‘The Mad ‘idiots’ subverted the comic form into a mainstream ideological weapon, aimed at icons of the left and the right.”1

Al Jaffe may have been one of the most prolific of the “idiots” contributing to almost every issue and a collection of one of his recurring offerings was even assembled into a book.  

I loved the book so much that, as a freshman in seminary when we were asked to compile a list of the most important books we ever read I really wanted to include Mad’s Magazines’  Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions until my more mature friends talked me out of it.

The book is a collection of retorts everybody wishes they’d come up with (but never do) when somebody asked them a stupid question.  

I learned a lot from that book and so today, as the self-proclaimed master of the quick comeback to people who are being snarky, and with almost two thousand years to think about it, I’m going to begin by taking up the disciple’s cause and suggesting what they should have said to that know-it-all pair of angels when they asked “why do you stand here looking into the sky?”

Why are we gazing up into heaven?  Why are we just standing here looking up into the sky?  I’ll tell you why!” they might have said.

“At an impulse we tied ourselves to this man Jesus and his mission.  We had three wonderful years with him and watched him do some amazing things.  He healed countless sick people!  He catered a banquet for a few thousand with provisions that were meagre at best.  He reached across boundaries and talked to people, helped people, that we would have never thought to speak to much less help.  These were high times.

“Sure, on occasion, he upset the political and religious apple cart and called into question some long held and cherished beliefs of both state and church, but we never thought that would be enough to get him killed, much less crucified.

“Then, listen our two fine winged friends, he came back!  Not in spirit, not as a ghost, he came back, and we had resurrection parties.  They started when people, dressed a lot like you two, told us he had risen. 

“Sure, he was not with us all the time like he used to be, but two members of our group met him when they sadly took a hike to Emmaus and he came to them, broke bread with them and blessed them and it was if their hearts were on fire with new life, new hope.

“Then, later that evening he showed up again!  He invited us to look at the scares in his hands and feet!  He had supper with us.  Had a little broiled fish that he seemed to enjoy a lot.  

He was in and out of our lives countless times.  Ask Thomas who couldn’t believe but now does!  Ask Peter, and the rest of the fisherman who saw him and ate breakfast with him on a beach.  Now he’s gone, and it looks like he’s gone for good.

As Barbara Lundblad once said of this moment: “Jesus’ disciples must have felt the earth slipping beneath their feet at the thought of being left alone.”2

To which Amy Butler adds:

You can imagine their confusion and downright horror.  They were ready to follow him to whatever was next. And then . . . away he went. Away. Unbelievably, there they were on the hillsides of Galilee hands cupping their eyes, staring up into a brilliant blue sky, trying desperately to understand what Jesus was up to now. And then he was gone. I have to admit that if I had been among the group of disciples there I also would have stared, mouth gaping open, at the clouds in the sky and the wisp left behind as Jesus ascended.3

 Suddenly, he was gone, ‘vanishing into the fog like the end of a dream too good to be true.’”4

So, there they were looking up into to the sky and wondering, wondering, just wondering.

It was a spell that had to be broken and that is what the angel’s question did. While it may have called for a snappy answer it was a call to get moving.  “It’s time to stop staring and get going, time to stop pondering eternity ... withdrawing from the world and recommit yourself to it. The text continues, “Then they returned to Jerusalem.” They did not go off into the desert to meditate; they went to work.”5

It is quite possible that we, who have been to far too many church meetings, may wince at what they did first but it looks like the first thing they did was call a meeting. And, in an “O My God” moment for this church, it was a call committee meeting.

They were looking for someone to take the place of Judas and, one might argue, that they had no place to go but up, so they put forth two candidates Justus and Matthias and instead of reviewing resumes, curriculum vitaes, asking for references, and going over financial packages, they cast lots.  Yes, essentially with a little prayer for good measure, the twelfth apostle was chosen by a roll of the dice.  

I’m not sure the system would have been better than ours but it certainly would have been quicker.  Just saying.

But if you listened carefully to Peter outlining the candidates’ requirements you would have heard a perfect description of what, not only they, but all of us are to be about. Peter says that “one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection."6

There is a complete job description for all of us embedded so deep in the minutes of the first church meeting that we just might miss it.  We are to be “a witness to Jesus’ resurrection.”  That’s the thesis sentence of Christianity!  That’s our reason for existence!  That is what we are to be about.  We are to bear witness to the resurrection!

That’s what the disciples did.  

Matthias, who is never mentioned again in all of Scripture but who it is believed carried his witness to the resurrection to “Cappadocia, a mountainous district now in central Turkey, and later journeyed to the region about the Caspian Sea, where he was martyred.”7

And Justice, whom the National Catholic Register called “An-Almost Apostle” who never travelled any further than twenty-five miles from Jerusalem.8

Near or far, famous or never heard of, we are to be witnesses of the resurrection.

Witness to the resurrection in the marketplace as we shop for food at the grocery or widgets at the hardware store. 

Witness to the resurrection in our homes as we wash dishes, do laundry, and mow the lawn.

  

Witness to the resurrection at our workplace and our play places.

Witness to the resurrection as we “live here among real people who have bills to pay, and children to raise, and parents to be cared for, and questions to be answered.”9

With more and more people opting to go to breakfast rather than come to church.  With more and more people opting for the health club, or a coffee at Starbucks or to go on a bike ride or for a run being a witness to the resurrection is more important than ever.

Biblical scholar, Martin Culpepper, said it best in his commentary:

Where the Lord's physical hands and feet are no longer present, the ministry of the hands of countless saints in simple and sincere ministries continues to bear witness to the Lord's living presence. {It is in}  the daily testimony of the faithful that the Christ still lives and the work of his kingdom continues.  The uniqueness of the Easter message is that it invariably changes the lives of those who find themselves touched by it.10

So, for us, the angel’s question is not a stupid one but an important one. “why are you standing here staring at the sky?”11  There are lives waiting to be touched by our witness to the resurrection.  The angel  is not so much asking us a question but issuing a call to get moving.  

So, off we go to be “witnesses of the resurrection.”

 ________________

1. Jordan Orlando, “A World without Mad Magazine,” The New Yorker, July 25, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-world-without-mad-magazine.

2. Barbara Lundblad, “Commentary on Luke 24:44-53,” Working Preacher , November 11, 2020, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ascension-of-our-lord/commentary-on-luke-2444-53-4#.

3. Amy Butler, “‘Don’t Just Stand There Do Something,’” A Sermon for Every Sunday, May 6, 2024, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/.

4. Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1995), 80.

5. John M. Buchanan, “Into the World.” Sermon preached at The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. 24 May 2009.

6. Acts 1:22b. (NRSVUE) [NRSVUE=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

7. “St. Matthias,” Encyclopædia Britannica, March 26, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Matthias.

8. Theresa Doyle Nelson , “Blessed Joseph Barsabbas - An Almost-Apostle,” NCR, July 21, 2020, https://www.ncregister.com/blog/blessed-joseph-barsabbas-an-almost-apostle.

9. William H Willimon, “The Body of Christ,” Pulpit Resource, Year B, 43, no. 2 (2015): 29 – 32.

10. R. Alan Culpepper, Luke: The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. IN (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2005), 490.

11. Acts 1:11b. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson,  The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs,, CO: NavPress,1995).]

Easter 6B - "Love Changes Everything"

 

Saint John 15:9-17

Whenever this text comes up, in which Jesus waxes grand-eloquent on the subject of love, I am always reminded of Calvin Cooledge.  It’s a stretch, I know, so hang with me. 

The story goes that President Calvin Coolidge, who was known as a person of few words, one day went to church and his wife Grace stayed home. When he got home, Grace asked him what the sermon had been about. “Sin,” replied Cal. “What did the preacher have to say about it.” Grace asked. Cal paused, sighed, and replied, “He was against it.”

If today, on the highly unlikely chance that someone asked you what your pastor talked about you can say: “Love.”  And it they ask you to say more, you can reply “He was for it.”

I am. But in a measured, some would say, a little cynical way.  Perhaps that because I am such a fan of Operas and Musicals.

True love that ends tragically is the part of countless operas.  From the moment that the hero or heroine professes undying love you know that somebody’s death will come before the final curtain falls.  Even a light-hearted opera like Carman, with one memorable tune after another, Carmen is murdered by her lover, bringing to a close another fun-filled evening of theatre.

The same is true for musicals that usually revolve around the almost identical  plot of one person meeting another person “across a crowded room” and finding true love. Think of it! 

Emile de Becque, a middle-aged French expatriate, who has become a plantation owner on a South Pacific Island, instantly falls in love with Ensign Nellie Forbush, an optimistic and naive young American navy nurse from Little Rock, Arkansas.

Tony and Maria, a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, from different ethnic groups and different gangs spy each other at a community dance and before you know it, they are staring into each other’s eyes, kissing, and pledging that they never be apart. We all know the trouble that caused.

Even in the play “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing”, which gave us such a heart-warming title song the main character is killed off.  While, some musicals tell us that, love may make “the world go round” they should come with Harry Carey’s warning, “there’s danger here Charie.”

I always thought a better, more truthful song about love appears in the rarely performed musical Aspects of Love by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.  “Love Changes Everything.  Brings you glory. Brings you shame. {Yes, love changes everything and} Nothing in the world will ever be the same ”

That is more like it. It is not starry-eyed and star-crossed lovers in a chance encounter on a South Pacific Island. It is not sweaty teenagers on a dance floor.

All of us who have experienced real love in our lives know it has challenges, takes work, and causes us to grow.  It can “change everything.”

This is the kind of love Jesus was talking about when he gave his one and only commandment to his disciples. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”1

You won’t find that in many musicals. It is a love so radical, so tough, that is has led more than one cynic to suggest that we would have been better off if Jesus had just stuck with the original ten commandments rather than adding this additional one. Furthermore, the context makes this command seem even more daunting. 

The scholars who constructed the Revised Common Lectionary (Whom some of us believe were members of the faculty of Hogwarts!) have magically transported us back, on this the Fifth Sunday of Easter, to not only before the resurrection but before the crucifixion. 

We are, once again, in the upper room with Jesus and his disciples. They have just finished their Passover Seder. Jesus, noticing that none of his friends had done this menial task, gets up from the table, girds himself with a towel and washes his disciples' feet. Then he predicts that one of those friends whose feet he has just washed will verbally betray him (Peter) while another will physically betray him (Judas). 

Instead of lashing out with a real scolding for being so disloyal Jesus instead commands them to love one another in the same way he has loved them. 

However, for John, “the love that Jesus commands his disciples to have for one another is specifically a love for other believers. It is a love directed at those who have believed in Jesus as the Messiah and who follow him. This group of believers include both Jews and Gentiles.”2

In other words, it is a love that is meant for everybody. 

That was the early Church’s problem as they goes around preaching about Jesus. 

They were attracting all sorts of believers. Not only devout Jews but also Gentiles and even those who had no former religious interest or affiliation. “And it is at this point of growth, and change, and expansion that the first church faces a conflict and controversy that will either unmake it or reorganize it completely.”3

Jesus’ love will either change everything, or it won’t.

We’ve seen what happens when it doesn’t.  

We’ve seen what happens when people are excluded because they think in ways that are different or, worse yet, not exactly like our own.  We know what happens in the name of theological purity.  Churches, people, nations become divided.

We've seen what happens when people are excluded because of their race, or creed, clan or faction, or orientation.  I’ve always wondered how many good people have been kept outside of the church by the unlovely attitudes of the people on the inside?

This is not some new struggle that we have just developed it is an attitude that goes all the way back to the Book of Acts.

We see it in today’s reading.  

Peter has been struggling with the new direction of inclusion that he has been given. The church then, as is sometimes the case with the church now, is highly resistant to Peter’s spirit.  Peter’s new notion of the inclusive love of Jesus will change everything.

Was this following Jesus business for insiders or was it for outsiders? And what kind of outsiders? Was it for people like them, who looked like them, acted like them, followed the same religious customs, or was Peter and his friends just going to let in anybody and everybody. 

It seems that Peter is going to let everybody in and let Christ’s love change them.

He was looking around and discovering that the same message that moved him to follow Jesus was moving others. This thing they were a part of was unstoppable, uncontrollable, unimaginable. It was going to be bigger than they ever dared dreamed because it was going to be for all people, everywhere. 

Peter and his sister and brother followers of Jesus were bearing fruit with a love that changed them, was changing others, was changing everything.

Not all musicals or operas end in disaster and death.

Good-by Mr. Chips, concludes with Professor Arthur Chipping, looking back at his life and remembering that day when his liberal, modern, young wife upended the singing of the school song during a morning chapel turning it from a dirge into a rousing chorus. She started as a lone voice picking up the tempo, and was surprisingly joined by the headmaster’s wife, and finally, gradually, the students and even members of the faculty. 

After his retirement Professor Chipping, Mr. Chips, while walking around campus, looks back at the school he served and loved for so long and remembers that moment and the words of the song, singing it softly to himself: 

    “In the evening of my life I shall look to the sunset, 

      At a moment in my life when the night is due. 

    And the question I shall ask only God can answer. 

    Was I brave and strong and true? 

    Did I fill the world with love my whole life though?” 

That's all Jesus asks us to do — fill our world with love.

It is more than enough for any of us, but it comes with the promise that by this everyone, yes everyone, shall know we are his disciples, if we "fill the world with love our whole lives through.” 

So, in the highly unlikely chance, that sometime this week anyone should ask you what the preacher talked about last Sunday you can tell them: “Love.” Then wait for a moment and add: “He was for it.”

________________

1. St. John 13:34-35. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version] 

2. Mark Price, “John 13:31-35. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading to Scripture,” Connections. A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 2 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2018): pp. 262-265.

3. Kristin Adkins Whitesides, “Standing in the Way,” Day 1, May 9, 2022, https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/62700a5c6615fba476000180/kristin-adkins-w hitesides-standing-in-the-way. 

Easter 5B - "Weirdos Welcome"

 

Acts 8:26–40 and Saint John 15:1–8

Several years ago, I was asked to serve on the board of a Campus Ministry at the prestigious University on the North Shore.

Because their congregation was made up exclusively of college and graduate students who were incurring enormous debt to get an education the ministry was always scrounging for money. So, as with most board meetings, the conversation was more about money than ministry and I got to thinking about people I knew. 

There was a Lutheran church on the south side of town and another on the north side leaving people in the center of town with no place to worship anyplace near what was called the “ministry center.”

I thought about the young couple who had twins under the age of three who weren’t particularly faithful not because they didn’t want to come to church but because even if they started getting ready for church at 8 A.M. by the time they got their children dressed, ready, strapped into their car seats, removed from the car seats because one of them had to go to the bathroom, and stopped them from fussing the only worship they could attend was the 5 P.M. “last chance mass” at Saint Monica’s.  

What if we told them there was a “ministry center” with preaching and a full Eucharist every Sunday that they could walk to and would welcome them?  

I thought about the older person with the broken hip who might have lived three doors away and who couldn’t drive yet but who could hobble over?  Wouldn’t it be great to reach out to them?

I thought about how good it would be for the students to worship and fellowship with people who were not like them. 

When I spoke my thoughts aloud the pastor’s response was (And how I wish I was making this up!):  “As long as they are not weirdos, it’s okay.”

I thought she was kidding and said: “Hey!  Hey!  I’m a weirdo and I resent that remark.” The lack of laughter told me that she was not joking in the least.

I was reminded of the classic comment made by Dawn French who played Geraldine Granger in “The Vicar of Dibley” when one of her usually strange parish council meetings went completely off the rails.  “I see,” said the ever-patient vicar, “that the last bus from Looneyville has finally arrived.”

Apparently, in some places, people who might need the Gospel must live up to some arbitrary standard that we are creating on the fly before they can join the fellowship.  They are welcome so long as they are not “weird.”  A stipulation that would exclude not only me but almost everybody I know or would choose to be associated with.

And it probably would exclude the two central characters in today’s reading from the Book of Acts.  They both must have thought the other just a little on the weird side.

We would never suspect that the place of the meeting would be a good location for a biblical discussion.  Did you hear the word?  Did you hear the word where this little tet-a-tet took place. It was in Gaza!  

And we may be wondering, can anything good come out of Gaza?  A place of distrust, one attack after another, Palestinian versus Israelis, Israelis versus Palestinian, that in the last few weeks have bled over to our college campuses.  Gaza is a place where truces never last, anger and retribution rage to the point where now it has been reduced to rubble and refugees.  

In this land of violence, it would be weird to listen in on a civil conversation between  a Greek-speaking Jew from the Holy Land and a dark-skinned African from Ethiopia.

But here we are and there they are so even though it may feel a little weird it would be well for us to listen in.

Our entire knowledge of Ethiopia may be centered around two images.  The famine of the 1980's and the opera “Aida” where the title character is an Ethiopian Princess who is imprisoned by her captures in Egypt.  Both images lead us to a land of mystery, intrigue, and, in the case of the opera, ill-fated romance.

The Ethiopian in the chariot is a mix of contradictions.  He has an important role and exalted title but he is still and outcast.  He may be the Secretary of the Treasury to his queen but he is still, because of the labels put on him by his sexuality, an outcast who “does not conform to the rules set by standard boundaries.”

He is powerless yet powerful, strange yet impressive, ignorant yet knowledgeable. He—indeed even as inscribed on his own body—projects a sense of liminality. That doesn’t mean he is by definition oppressed or an object of pity. It means he might represent surprise, subversion, and expanse.1

 He also is a stunning example of how the gospel can help us expand our boundaries and limitations.

Out of the corner of his eye Philip sees someone reading from a scroll of the Prophet Isaiah.  The biggest surprise for Philip is that some guy, riding in a chariot, had enough dough to own his very own scroll.  Owning your own scroll and racing along in a chariot meant you were super wealthy and a very intriguing character.

Philip races up to him and asks him a question: ““Do you understand what you are reading?”2 The good thing for Philip is that the guy is from Ethiopia and not Chicago.  A Chicagoen would have answered, “What’s it to you?  Mind your own business! Go away!”

Instead, this very polite man says, in effect, “No. Can you help me?”

Philip, in a really weird moment, steps over the countless boundaries of race, and orientation, clan, and faction and simply tells him about Jesus.  So powerful is his witness that the man responds by saying:  “Look, here is some water; is there any reason why I should not be baptized now?”3

Well, we might hem-and-haw at this question.  “The Church’s historic, embarrassing reply has been plenty of things. “4

Ahh, church order.  Church order can think of countless reasons for this sacrament to be withheld.  “Isn’t this all a little sudden?” we rational Westerners might ask.  “Have you thought about this?”  Or, in some traditions, “Are you really willing to walk ‘the saw-dust trail’ and accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour?”  “Do you really want to do this?”  “Don’t worry if you’d like to think about this awhile,” in the words that Billy Graham used to conclude every campaign for Christ, “the busses will wait! The busses will wait!”

Neither Philip nor his newfound friend and brother wait a second, or a nano-second.  They’re in the river, using who knows what kind of appropriate or inappropriate baptismal formula. Dunking, sprinkling, splashing?  They get the job done.  Philip disappears and, we are told, the Ethiopian leader, “went on his way rejoicing.”5

Suddenly, the one who wants to be included is included. The foreigners are in; the eunuchs are in. The church’s boundaries are being muddied on the banks of some unknown body of water...jarring us beyond “our comfort zone. Beyond our regulations. Beyond our worshiping of texts over people. Beyond our understanding. Beyond our racism. Beyond our classism. Beyond our control.”

Suddenly, the one who wants to be included is included. The foreigners are in; the eunuchs are in. The church’s boundaries are being muddied on the banks of some unknown body of water...jarring us beyond “our comfort zone. Beyond our regulations. Beyond our worshiping of texts over people. Beyond our understanding. Beyond our racism. Beyond our classism. Beyond our control.6

  As a former pastor of mine said once to her congregation on Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile:

God takes our boundaries; God takes our stereotypes; God takes our rules; God takes our expectations; God takes all of that and often God looks at ... it and says, No. I don’t have favorites. Your limits, your litmus tests, your fears—none of that limits me. I embrace whom I embrace and guess what, God says, I have got really long arms.7

 Luke reminds us that the Gospel is about new possibilities for everyone! No one is outside of God’s grace. No one is outside of God’s love. No one is outside of the embrace of the Gospel! Jesus was always going to reaching out to the ones on the outside to bring them in. Jesus was always breaking social expectations to make clear that he cared and wouldn’t ever stop caring.

For me, my fellow weirdos, and weirdo Wanna-Be's the idea that Christ has long enough arms to reach across any artificial barriers that might be created is good news. The idea that Christ cares and will never stop caring is amazing news.

For all of you who have ever felt excluded in any way the idea that we have all been embraced by God’s love is good news too.  

It is nothing less than the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that is meant for everybody, even weirdos.

________________

1.  F. Scott Spencer, “Commentary on Acts 8:26-40,” Working Preacher, April 10, 2024, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-acts-826-40-5.

2. Acts 8:30b. (NRSVUE) [NRSVUE=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

3. Acts 8:36. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips,  The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: Collins, 2009)]

4. James C. Howell, “‘What Can We Say April 28? Easter 5,’” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, accessed April 27, 2024.

5. Acts 8:39d. (NRSVUE)

6. Andrew Foster Conners, “‘Get Up and Go,’” A Sermon for Every Sunday, May 3, 2015, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/tag/andrew-foster-connors/page/2/.

7. Shannon J. Kershner, "Hindering" Sermon preached at The Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, April 24, 2016. http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2016/042416.htm

Easter 4B - "The Best Shepherd"

Psalm 23 and Saint John10:11-18

The conversation almost always goes something like this.

"Pastor?  Do I call you Pastor? Father? Doctor?  What?

"Anyway, we got your name from the funeral director who said you might be willing to come and say a few words over our uncle Phil.  He wasn't a very religious man.  In fact, nobody here can remember if he ever went to church at all.

“We're not very religious either.  We don't know about our friends. We don't have a church we go to which is why we are calling you.  Can you come?  Nothing very religious. Just a few words. A prayer maybe?  We don't know but we're sure you'll do right  by our uncle."

If my schedule allows, I try to say yes and when I do many times, I am pleasantly pleased.  Because no matter what the family tells me about their uncle’s faith, or lack thereof.  No matter what the family tells me about their faith, or the lack thereof.  No matter if they know anything about their friends faith, or lack thereof.

When we get to the part where I start saying the twenty-third psalm and I look up mouths are moving along with the words.  Sometimes, uninvited, people start to join in, saying the words along with me, out loud.  First one, then another, maybe a few more.  On occasion even some members of Uncle Phil's family who never professed to be religious, join in.

The twenty-third psalm has that unique ability to assure us, even in our darkest hours that everything is going to be all right.  That somehow, someway, we will make it through what we are going through and, when push comes to shove, that might as well be someone like Jesus, our good shepherd.

Most of the time we think we can do quite well on our own, thank you very much. We like to think ourselves as competent, caring, active busy people. But there are times, probably more times than we care to admit, that all our activity, all our accomplishments, all of our brain power, all of our will power, comes up short and we have to admit we need something more, something better.

Then along comes Jesus who says, “I am the good shepherd.”

The people on the phone, calling on me to say a few words to assuage their despair at the loss of a loved one are looking for someone to lead them out of it. They are looking for a shepherd.  And, in Jesus, they get a lot more than they bargained for.  They are looking for a good shepherd but in Jesus they get not just a good shepherd, they get the best shepherd.

In Jesus they get an extreme kind of love of a shepherd that, even in his day required a 24/7 commitment.  That is what differentiates Jesus from all the other shepherds, would be shepherds, and wanna be shepherds.  He is not there fleece us his promise is to be with us.  

Some scholars believe that this idea is at the very center of Psalm 23 and one has gone to great lengths to try and prove it.   Chad Bird, a scholar of Biblical Hebrew with the 1517 project and a man with clearly too much time on his hands noted:

At the heart of Psalm 23 are the words, “For Thou art with me.” There are exactly 26 Hebrew words before that phrase, and exactly 26 words after it. What’s more, in the verses leading up to that phrase, the poet speaks of God in the third person: “he” does this and “he” does that. But when we get to this numerical center, the psalmist transitions into speaking to God directly, in the second person: for “Thou” art with me, “Thy” rod and staff, “Thou” dost prepare.1

 Dr. Sam Wells, former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University and now at a church which may have the most lovely name in Christendom, Saint Martin-in-the-Fields said:

We’ve stumbled upon the most important word in the Bible – the word that describes the heart of God and the nature of God’s purpose and destiny for us. And that word is “with.” That’s what God was in the very beginning, that’s what God sought to instill in the creation of all things, that’s what God was looking for in making the covenant with Israel, that’s what God coming among us in Jesus was all about, that’s what the sending of the Holy Spirit meant, that’s what our destiny in the company of God will look like. It’s all in that little word “with.” God’s whole life and action and purpose are shaped to be “with” us.2

Also, adds his predecessor at Duke, Dr. William H. Willimon, when we stray Jesus, the best shepherd, has an action plan in place.  That plan says Willimon, is hidden in the sweet little verse that shows up near the end of the psalm: “Surely good and mercy shall follow me.”

The word that makes Jesus the best shepherd is not just that he is with us but that follows us.  The word “follow” in the original Hebrew means “pursue.” Think of that! Christ doesn’t just follow us with his goodness and mercy, he pursues us.  

Dr. Willimon told the story once that, as my church history professor used to say, “if it isn’t true it should be.”

It was about an old guy.  A bitter lonely old man who was mean to everybody and everything. He never went to church or, frankly, had anything to do with anybody. When he got so sick that the paramedics had to carry him out of his apartment and took him to the hospital he was utterly alone.  No family, no friends, no visitors.

But there was one nurse in training who had yet to learn “everything they teach you about detachment, the need for distance with your patients” who befriended the old guy.  At first he didn’t know how to act and he would snarl at her, “go away.”  When she tried to help him with something he would growl, “I’ve got this.”

Slowly they developed something. At first it was only a few less nasty responses. They there was a little conversation.  And finally one night as she held his hand she heard him, and perhaps he even surprised himself when he heard the words, “Thank you. God bless you.” come out of his mouth.

As she left the room that night, there was one last voice that remained. It was the voice of the best shepherd.  A voice that had been with him all along.  It was the voice that pursued him all his life, was pursuing him even now, and would pursue him to the end.

It was the voice of the good shepherd, the best shepherd, and if you were there you might have heard it too and the word was “Gotcha.”

The best shepherd “is always out pursuing.  We wander down crooked paths, bob like jetsam down some raging river, {Jesus, the best shepherd} has met us there, pursued us.”3

Think about what that means not just in the low lighting and somber music in a funeral home but for all of life. Think of the most peaceful place you have ever been, Jesus is there.  Think of the most joyous moment of your life. Think of the darkest time you have ever faced.  Jesus is there, too. Jesus never leaves our side or leaves us out of his sight.

Jesus is with us in this life.  Jesus is pursuing us every step of the way too so that in the end we will hear the promise of the best shepherd when he says to us, “Gotcha.”

________________

1.  Chad Bird. “Three Hidden Hebrew Treasures in Psalm 23.” 1517, July 27, 2019. https://www.1517.org/articles/three-hidden-hebrew-treasures-in-psalm-23.

2, Sam Wells, The Most Important Word.” Sermon preached at the Chapel of Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. 24 December 2010.

3. William H Willimon, “Pursued by Mercy,” Pulpit Digest, 517, no. 73September /October (September 1, 1992): 5–8.

Easter 3B - "Winning Witness"

 Acts 3:12–19

1 John 3:1–7

Saint Luke 24:36b–48

It’s funny and sad how often some people can take good things, great moments, and turn them in to something else, something less.

Take last Tuesday for example.  People in a dozen states experienced a total eclipse.  From Texas to Maine eyes were fixed on the sky waiting for the moon to completely cover the sun.  Television networks and local stations sent reporters far and wide.  Tom Skilling came out of retirement and returned from Hawaii to recreate the moment he first experienced an eclipse in 1997.

Some people cried with a sense of awe, wonder and amazement.  Some folks drove hundreds of miles just to see one just as Lowell and I did during that 1997 eclipse.  The drive down wasn’t so bad, but because the price of a hotel room was so greatly inflated we decided to drive back the same day.  Mistake!  Two lane highways were not meant to handle the amount of traffic on that day and after a ten-hour trip home nerves were frayed, and we were not speaking.

On the other hand, a friend whose son lives in Indianapolis gathered the whole family together, some coming from as far away as Oregon, for the first time since his mother passed.  Since I have known him, his wife, and his sons since they were little guys the pictures of their reunion – now with their wives and children – made my heart swell.

While Chicago expected only a 94 percent totality it did give us a chance to experience a multi-generational moment and the children from the academy and the residents of Renaissance Place gathered on the top floor of our parking garage to gaze at the sky together and eat, thanks to our incredibly clever Mr. Comella and staff, Sun Chips.

Some of those gathered will probably never experience another event like it while there is a very good chance that our students will live the twenty years until the next one in 2044.

Since I will only be ninety, I hope to experience that one too.  Only I do hope that I will not be doing so from the roof of the garage as our “Interim Pastor.”  Just saying.

There was some, however, who just could not resist throwing a wet blanket over our national celebration of creation’s glory.

A performance politician from a southern state wrote on her X, formerly Twitter, account: “God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent,” she wrote. “Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens.”1

One of the great things about our age is that if you say something stunningly stupid on the internet someone will call you on it as did one perfectly when he pointed on that  “She has the scientific understanding of a medieval peasant.” While another reminded that eclipses “are not random, they follow strict mathematical rules and can be predicted centuries before they happen.”2

Some mistakes are benign while others can lead us into very dangerous waters.

Such was the case of Peter’s little speech in the third chapter of Acts in our First reading today.  Up until the moment Peter spoke up things were going very well but as soon as he opened his mouth and began to “give a witness” things went south hurriedly and radically.

Peter had just healed a man who had been lame since birth but instead of taking the win and calling it a very good day Peter snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Here is what happened just before we picked up our reading for today.

As Peter and John enter the temple area for prayer for one day, they meet this disabled man begging for alms by the Beautiful Gate. Only instead of giving him money (which they don’t have), Peter offers him something much better. Announcing, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up  and walk, he takes the man’s hand and “raises him up.”3 

The response is even more dramatic than expected. Not only does the {man} stand and walk; he also hops up, goes into the temple precincts with Peter and John on his own two feet, and proceeds to leap about “praising God” 

When our reading begins the people are staring at Peter, and unfortunately it seems he is glaring back at them.  He starts by saying that it was not of his own power that he was able to do this but “It is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, who has done this thing to honor his servant Jesus...”4

It would have been a good idea, a great idea, if Peter would have stopped there but he goes on in a very accusatory tone.  “Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the holy and righteous one and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.”5

Biblical scholar Alyce M. McKenzie reminds us:

Everything about his speech would have been offensive to them, laying the blame for Jesus’ death entirely at their feet, his claim that the healing was by the power of the resurrected Messiah, his call for them to repent, and his warning of the consequences of ignoring that call.6

Perhaps what troubled me most is that this not only rings down through the years but stretches its boney finger of blame for Jesus’ death very close to this place when not very long ago “Scores of antisemitic flyers, placed inside small bags containing a substance with the “appearance of rat poison,” were spread across doorsteps in central Lincoln Park.  In addition to that, “nine clear zip-close bags containing flyers and the substance were found on various vehicles and doorways on the 500 block of West Belden Avenue {and} 75 additional bags were discovered on the 500 block of West Grant Street."7

Peter may have healed a man but his little speech as been misused and misquoted down through the centuries leading to deeds far worse than flyers on doorsteps.

Before placing blame on any group we need to remember three things: First, that about “two thousand years ago a particular group of Jewish leaders, in company with representatives of the Roman government orchestrated Jesus’ crucifixion — not the Jewish people as a whole, either then or now.”8

Second, that the policies of the government of Israel, while they may be abhorrent to many of us in the needless death and destruction, they have wrecked upon their neighbors is, again, not to be attributed to the Jewish people as a whole.

Finally, most importantly, we need to understand what we are to be about.  

Jesus told us to be his witnesses. This means we are to tell the story of Jesus.  

A good friend of mine, Rev. Scott Opsahl, in a sermon he preached last Sunday at our church in Bellingham reminded us who Jesus is and what he was about.  

Jesus was a man who believed that people would be set free from ideas and images about God that enslaved them. 

{He believed} that people would believe that through their everyday acts of human kindness they are intimately connected with the sacred.

{He believed} that people would live without fear in the peace of God’s presence, all the days of their lives.

His intimacy with God freed faith from dead religion, giving life to the humble with whom God resides.

What Jesus taught sparked opposition in his enemies and devotion among his followers.  He could speak truth to power shattering their illusions of authority and superiority. 

His words could be biting, angry, and ironic, yet always just.

He touched people’s lives in such a way that they no longer saw themselves in the same way, nor could they continue to live in the same manner.

He healed the sick and brought peace to the confused.

He could reach into the fragile places of broken lives and make them whole.

He brought light to the dark places of people’s souls so that they could live again and hope again.9

That is what he was doing for his disciples when he kept appearing to them over and over in locked in their dark rooms of fear.  That is the story his followers proclaimed down through the centuries as they proclaimed him Lord of their lives.

Their story is our story too.  It is to that story we give witness.  And, if we allow, it is a story that brings us beyond that which divides us to what unites us.  It is Christ’s presence that calls us to look up, like we did last Tuesday, see in the glory of creation, the light of his love shining upon us, all of us.  

Total Solar eclipses happen somewhere on earth every year with most occurring over the ocean where few get to see them.  

The next to occur over parts of the United States will be in 20 years but will only be able to be seen if one is lucky enough to be in, or live in “Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota.” The rest of us will just have to wait and be about the business of witnessing to others what Christ has done in our lives beginning in Lakeview, or wherever we live, and spreading to everyone we meet bringing Christ’s light to the dark places of their lives that they might believe again, hope again.

If we do this, unlike people who try to divide us up by politics, or clan, or orientation, or faction ours will be a winning witness to Christ’s life and love that is able to take every moment — even those moments on the cross — and turn it into something good.

________________

1. David Moye, “Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘Repent’ Earthquake Tweet Shakes Up Internet,” HuffPost, April 9, 2024, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-s-repent-earthquake-tweet-shakes-up-internet/ar-BB1l8WnT?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=91909348a0464de3ac171d997661b0f1&ei=17.

2. Dan Gooding, “Marjorie Taylor Greene Says NYC Earthquake Is a ‘Sign from God’ to Repent,” The Independent, April 9, 2024, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-says-nyc-earthquake-is-a-sign-from-god-to-repent/ar-BB1l8WIp?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=de0ec3d249be4baa9ca721634aebf45a&ei=22.

3. Michal  Beth Dinkler, “Commentary on Acts 3:12-19,” Working Preacher from Luther Seminary, April 10, 2024,-2/commentary-on-acts-312-19-5.

4. Acts 3:13a.  (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips,  The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: Collins, 2009).

5. Acts 3:13–15 (NRSVUE) [NRSVUE=The New Revised Standard Version. Updated Edition.]

6. Alyce M. McKenzie, “Acts 3:12-19. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture,” Connections. A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year B, 2 (April 1, 2020): 219–21.

7. Kate Armanini, “Antisemitic Flyers, Substance with ‘appearance of Rat Poison’ Found in Chicago, Alderman Says,” pantagraph.com, April 9, 2024, https://pantagraph.com/news/state-regional/crime-courts/antisemitic-flyers-substance-with-appearance-of-rat-poison-found-in-chicago-alderman-says/article_c27eb84e-a232-5b45-84e2-aedbe592531c.html.

8. McKenzie, loc. cit.

9. Scott Opsahl, untitled sermon preached at Faith Lutheran Church, Bellingham, Washington, 7 April 2024

Easter 2B - "Jesus Always Shows Up"

 Saint John 20:19-31

Dr. William H. Willimon tells the story of an Easter Sunday Morning way back when he was the Dean of the Chapel at Duke University Chapel.  Worship was just concluding with the last blast of the trumpets being heard, the last Alleluia being sung, and the big “ba da” of the Widor Toccata making the rafters ring, when a young man seemed to stumble forth in the late morning Durham sunlight.  He took Willimon by the hand, looked him straight in the eye, and said: “Do you know how hard it is to believe?”

It was the most honest thing that was said to me that morning, the Dean observed.

Doubt and its companion fear are a part of the faith experience but I join with one of my favourite preachers, Dr. James D. Howell, also of North Carolina (There must be something in the water down there!) who said, “I’m wary of sermons that get fixated on ‘doubting’ Thomas. It’s a thing; I’m unsure if it helps parishioners if the clergy say, “I have doubts too!” We’ve all heard sermons about ‘doubting Thomas.’ Doubt is hardly praised in this story.”1

Neither is fear.  Saint John tells us that on that first Easter evening “the disciples were meeting behind locked doors, in fear of the Jewish leaders...”2

But it wasn’t just the learned religious leaders that the disciples were afraid of it was also the Roman authorities.  

Remember, it was their guards who were posted at the tomb with the charge to keep it secure.  Now it was empty.  What happened to the body?  I wonder who had a bigger stake at finding it – the learned religious leaders or a government that had prided itself on its security measures and now had to deal with the blow back of having one of them fail.  It appears that somehow, someway, they had not been able to guard something as simple as a tomb with a body it.  

Where was the body?  Who had the body? That group hidden behind lock doors were the prime suspects.

In the midst of all this they may have been mourning the loss of a friend.  Reports from earlier in the day notwithstanding, Jesus was no longer with them.  He might be alive but he also still could be dead.  

“Following a death,” Dr. Fred Craddock reminds us, “there is much to do and there is nothing to do: nobody goes to work, nobody goes to school, nobody is hungry, nobody has anything to say.” If you live in the south someone may show up at your door with a casserole or, better yet, a peach cobbler, but otherwise, “helpers are helpless.”3

Dr. Peter Marty says:

I think of this passage almost every time I lead a funeral. An exhausted family gathers in shock, weary from days of too little sleep and too much crying. Dressed in ill-fitting black clothes just purchased for the day and fingering little packets of tissue in their hands, these mourners look like the wind of life has been sucked right out of them. The present feels joyless. The future looks foggy.4

So, there they were, facing a future that was at best foggy and perhaps even downright dangerous, when something amazing happened, the risen Christ showed up.  To this band of people who, except for the woman and the disciple he loved at the foot of the cross, had betrayed him, and forsook him, and deserted him, he showed up.

Then, Dr. Peter Marty, reminds us “the first thing Jesus did when out of the tomb, once he picked the dirt clods from his eyebrows, was to breathe on his disciples. That's right, he breathed on them. He opened his mouth and let them have it--three days' worth of empty stomach breath.”

Before they had any chance to pull away in revulsion, Jesus said to all of those disciples, ‘Peace be with you’ --words that evidently felt to them like a breath of fresh air.”5

Jesus showed up.  And one week later, we are told, he’ll show up again, this time for Thomas.  The first time Jesus showed up Thomas was a no show.  

Thomas gets “dinged” a lot for his absence on that first Easter evening.  Every year, on the Sunday after Easter, not only is this poor guy name mentioned he is the central character in the story. But remember, this story is not about Thomas but about Jesus who showed up.

The only thing Thomas is guilty of is absence on that first Easter evening when Jesus made one of his appearances to the whole group of disciples.  They were all gathered together but Thomas is not there.

Maybe he got tired of sitting shiva for someone who may, or may not, have been dead. Perhaps he got tired of the endless speculation about what happened.  Perhaps he was as confused - as we can sometimes be - by all the stories of resurrection encounters with Jesus.  Perhaps he was just tired of staring at the wallpaper and wondering what to do.  Perhaps he needed a breath of fresh air.  We don’t know what Thomas was doing. All we know for certain is that he wasn’t in the room where it happened when Jesus made his grand re-entry into the disciples’ lives.

Upon his return all Thomas does is wonder if what his friends are saying is true.

Thomas walks into the upper room, and everyone says, “Oh my gosh, guess who was just here? Jesus! He breathed in our faces, OK that was weird, but then he showed us his wounds! It was really him!”6

Remember, what they are telling him is that his friend Jesus who was stone cold, definitely dead only a few days ago is now running around making guest appearances to everybody Thomas knows.  Everybody that is but him. 

We’ve been celebrating Easter for all of our lives and while the story has not lost one bit of its power experiencing it for the very first time must have been an entirely different matter.  This is not something that is taken in easily and Thomas is not sure he can believe it just based on word of mouth.

It is then.  It is exactly then that Jesus shows up.

If you don’t remember anything else I say this morning, remember this: Jesus was faithful too.  Jesus never gave up on Thomas!  Jesus showed up for him.  

Jesus could have responded: “All right then, don’t take your friends word for it.  Don’t listen to them for all I care.”  He could have even said, “Listen I’m not going to subject myself to your cockamamie tests.  Either believe or don’t believe but don’t you go poking me.”

Instead, Jesus shows up and says: “Whatever you need Thomas.  Poke, prod, ask, talk, do whatever you want.  While your doubts may have rocked your faith a little I have never lost faith in you.”

As Dr. M. Craig Barnes wrote once in The Christian Century. “At the center of the gospel is the proclamation the Jesus Christ has come looking for us.”7

He will show up.  

He will show up for Brooklyn Ashley this morning as she is baptized surrounded by members of this church young and old who have discovered that Jesus has come looking for us too and has shown up.

He will show up in the bread and wine of Holy Communion welcoming all who have come looking for him at his table.

No doubt he showed up for that young man who staggered between belief and doubt as he emerged from the Duke Chapel into the sun on that Easter Sunday morning.

He showed up for the women in the garden and the gang that gathered on behind locked doors on that first Easter night.

He showed up for Thomas and he will show up for you and me in good times and bad, in our joys and in our sorrows, at our work and in our play, in our doubts and in our fears because that is just what Jesus does.  Jesus shows up.

So, look for him here in Church to be sure but in your life as well and when you experience his presence don’t be too surprised because Jesus always shows up.

________________

1. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say April 7? Easter 2,” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, January 1, 2024, https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

2. St. John 20:19a (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishing, 1971.

3. Fred B. Craddock, “Above and beyond: Mark 16:1-8,” The Christian Century, April 5, 2023, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2003-04/above-and-beyond?code=5nUS7FM5VibOLHgataLU&utm_source=Christian%2BCentury%2BNewsletter&utm_campaign=c533d364cb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_SCP_2024-03-25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-31c915c0b7-%5BLIST_EMIL_ID%5D.

4.     Peter Marty, “April 11, Easter 2b (Acts 4:32-35; John 20:19-31), The Christian Century, March 24, 2021, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/april-11-easter-2b-acts-432-35-john-2019-31code=D0N5YuuSYvYIIuPZijL6&utm_source=Christian%2BCentury%2BNewsletter&utm_campaign=1d5465bf5c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_SCP_2024-04-01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-31c915c0b7-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D.

5. Peter W. Marty, “Believing Is Seeing” Day 1, accessed April 4, 2024, https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/5d9b820ef71918cdf2003e37/believing_is_seeing.

6. MaryAnn McKibben Dana, “Doubt Your Faith, Have Faith in Your Doubt,” A Sermon for Every Sunday (asermonforeverySunday.com, April 3, 2020), https://asermonforeverysunday.com/sermons/a22-second-sunday-easter-year/.

7. M. Craig Barnes, “Crying Shame,” The Christian Century, April 6, 2004, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2004-04/crying-shame?code=mYkvJDxsgFYKvcdixInn&utm_source=Christian%2BCentury%2BNewsletter&utm_campaign=1d5465bf5c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_SCP_2024-04-01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-31c915c0b7-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D.