From Behind Closed Doors

Scriptures:     Acts 4:32-35                           Psalm 133

I John 1:1 – 2:2                      John 20:19-31

What do you do when your whole world has come crashing down?  The disciples had walked away from all they had known – fishing boats, tax collection booths, friends, family – in order to follow a traveling teacher and healer from Nazareth named Jesus.  They had seen miracles! – sight and hearing restored, demons cast out, thousands fed from just a few loaves and fish.  Indeed, they had not only watched all of this but had been a part of it themselves!   Had they stayed out in Galilee, out in the rural areas, away from the authorities, who knows how long this could have continued?  But Jesus insisted on going to Jerusalem – to quote a Psalm, he “set his face like flint” toward Jerusalem.  He rode into Jerusalem, with his game face on.  He’d warned them that he would be arrested and killed, and it all unfolded just as he’d said.  And yet while it was bad enough to hear Jesus talk about it, it was a whole nother kind of awful to watch it themselves.  And most of it they couldn’t bear to watch – and they were afraid of being arrested themselves – and so they ran away.  Jesus had been there for them, but when Jesus needed them, they ran for the hills.  When the going got tough, the tough got going all right…..as far away from Jesus as their feet would carry them.

What do you do when your whole world has come crashing down?  Of course, eventually they’d probably go back to what they’d been doing – Peter and Andrew, James and John to their fishing boats, Matthew back to his tax booth…   But not just yet.  Not yet.  They needed some time to grieve together before they went their separate ways.  And they also needed to hide from the authorities until things cooled down.  So they gathered in a locked room.  They remembered.  They shared their stories.  “Remember when Jesus had met that guy living in the tombs and cast out the demons, and he was able to go home?  Remember that time he walked on water….how cool was that!.”  And so they told their stories.  Some of the women had come with some stories of their own – they’d gone to the tomb and seen an angel that told them Jesus had been raised.  Probably just some kind of hysterics, a case of the vapors….these women were always fluttering and fainting about something, weren’t they…..but the guys dutifully checked out their story.  Peter and John had gone to the tomb, and saw that it was empty, but no angelic appearances for them.  Jesus had been killed, and even after he was dead, his body couldn’t be left in peace.  What a world!

And so they gathered, and so they grieved….but suddenly Jesus was with them!  The doors to the room were locked, but somehow there was Jesus!   They weren’t sure what to expect him to say.  After all, they had messed up pretty badly, running away when they needed him.  Maybe he’d say, “Hey, Peter, James and John, you guys who fell asleep while I was praying in the garden, hope I’m not keeping  you awake now?  Hey Peter, do you know me now?  Hey disciples, where were you all when I needed you?”  But instead, Jesus said, “Peace be with you!”  He wasn’t angry.  What a relief!  And he showed them his hands and his side, so they knew it really was Jesus.

Jesus had a few more things to say.  “As the Father sent me, so I send you.”  “Send us where?”  they must have thought.  And then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  Jesus had promised that when he was gone, he would send another Comforter, the Holy Spirit….and here it was.

We’re not told when or how Jesus left.  We are told that the disciple Thomas wasn’t there.  Maybe they’d sent Thomas out to get pizza.  In all seriousness, though, give Thomas some credit – he’s the only one brave enough not to have been hiding out.   The others told Thomas what happened, and he wasn’t having any of it – just as the other disciples hadn’t believed when the women had told them about the Risen Christ.  “If I can’t put my finger in the wounds, I won’t believe.”

A week later, the scene repeats – same disciples, same room, same locked doors – and Thomas was with them.  Jesus appeared, and said, “Peace be with you.”  Then he showed Thomas the wounds in his hands and side.  And Thomas said, “My Lord and my God!”  Jesus said, “Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  This last sentence was a word from Jesus to the readers of John’s Gospel – a word of blessing to all of us.  At the same time, it’s also a blessing to remember that Jesus came back a second time just for Thomas.  Jesus didn’t want to leave Thomas behind, and so he did for Thomas everything he’d done the week before for the other disciples, to give him a chance to catch up.

As I was reading, it struck me:  Why were the doors locked the second time they got together?  Remember that the week before, Jesus had told them, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.”  But they hadn’t gone very far….a week later, they were back in the same place, back behind the same locked doors.  It took a second appearance of Jesus – with Thomas with them this time – to get them to leave their hiding place.

We may not be so different.  As the Father sent Jesus, so Jesus sends us.  But we don’t go very far.  Most of what we do as the church happens here, behind closed doors.  And while our front door isn’t locked, our members have sometimes had trouble getting past even our unlocked front door.  More to the point: does our message – does the good news of Jesus - get beyond our front door?  I ran into a person on Facebook again this week who thought our church was closed.  It’s frustrating – even after going door to door with flyers year after year, even with ads in the local newspaper, even with a website, a facebook group and a facebook page, some of our neighbors don’t know we’re here.

As the Father sent Jesus, Jesus sends us – but we  need to go.   Fewer and fewer people are willing to set foot inside a church these days – and they certainly won’t do so if they think the building is vacant, unless they want to steal the plumbing to sell as scrap  metal – and so we need to come out from behind our closed doors.  We need to be visible.  The disciples were behind locked doors because they didn’t want anyone to find them.  But I think we’d like our neighbors to find us.

As the Father sent Jesus, Jesus sends us.  What will it look like when we go?  Maybe it’ll look like Sean and his group feeding homeless people in Center City.  Might it look like us walking the streets of Bridesburg, looking for places of need and pain, and trying to bring healing?   Might it look like us helping with tutoring or an after school program?  Might it look like us connecting somehow with the veterans group in the neighborhood?  What will it look like?

John ended this section of his gospel with the words, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”   We at Emanuel are also a kind of book, an open book we hope, in which people can learn of Jesus and come to believe.  But will our book go unread, or will it gather cobwebs until it crumbles into dust?  Will all we say and do here lead anyone to Jesus?

May we go from this place, remembering that we are sent by Jesus, and sent for a purpose.  May we come out from behind our closed doors into the community to which God has called us.   Amen.

Whom Do You Seek - A Sermon for Easter Sunday

Scriptures

Acts 10:34-43             Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

                         I Corinthians 15:1-11                         John 20:1-18

In 2014, the New York City Rescue Mission and the Silver + Partner Ad Agency set up what had been described at the time as a “stunning social experiment”.  The point of the experiment was to demonstrate how much we block out the sight of homeless people.  In the experiment, a member of a family dressed up as a homeless person and sat on a busy street where they knew that their loved one – a husband, wife, sister, brother, mother, father – passed by every day on their way to work.  The film crew recorded video to document whether the family member passing by would recognize their loved one dressed as a homeless person.  The results were shocking, depressing, even disturbing:  in the experiment, not one – not a single solitary one – of the passers-by recognized their husband or wife or brother or sister or mother or father when dressed as homeless persons.  As much as we may love somebody, the experiment showed that if that somebody is in a context we wouldn’t expect them, especially when disguised as someone considered undesirable – a homeless person – we turn away.  And certainly those who actually are homeless, who have fallen through the gaps of our frayed social safety network, have likewise experienced the turning away of those they love.  We can take it as part of our mission to do what we can to restore at least some small portion of those losses, to provide, not only food, but connection to other human beings.

When I read about this experiment, I gained a bit more insight into Mary Magdalene’s behavior in our reading from John’s gospel.  Each of the resurrection accounts in the four gospels has its own distinctiveness, it’s own “secret sauce”, you might say.  An element of the “secret sauce” that flavors John’s gospel is the recurring character referred to as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” – who turns out at the end to be the author.   In John’s gospel, it is Mary Magdalene who goes to the tomb alone, discovers it empty, and runs to tell Peter and this “disciple whom Jesus loved” what she saw.  The two men engage in an odd sort of footrace to the tomb, the beloved disciple reaching the tomb first but afraid to venture inside, Peter reaching it second but entering it first.  This may have had to do with some sort of jockeying for position among Jesus’ closest disciples.  So they get to the tomb, see that, “yup,  it’s empty, just like Mary Magdalene said”, see the grave clothes….and go home.  And if it had been up to the guys, that would have been the Easter story….empty grave, graveclothes wrapped up, something happened but we don’t know what, have a nice day.  Thank goodness Mary Magdalene went back to the tomb with the guys, presumably at her own pace, since she’d already done quite a bit of running that morning.

The guys go home, but Mary hangs around the tomb a while, crying, and eventually poking her head in.  She sees two angels, who ask her, “Why do you cry?”  Mary tells them, “they’ve taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve laid him.”  Then Jesus himself comes up behind her, and asks her the same question: “Why are you crying?  Whom are you looking for?”  Mary mistook Jesus for the gardener, and asks him, “Sir, if you’ve taken him away, please show me where you put him and I’ll take him away.”  Jesus says her name – “Mary” – and something in his voice prompted her to recognize him.  “Rabbouni” – meaning “Teacher!” – she says.   Apparently she also embraced him and held on tight, because Jesus told her, “Don’t hold onto me….but go to my brothers and tell them, “I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and to your God.”  And Mary goes back to the disciples and tells them what she saw and heard.

As I read this story, two things struck me.  First of all is the difference in reactions to the news of the empty tomb.  In all four Gospels, the women are the first ones to reach the tomb, but only in Luke’s and John’s gospels do we read about Peter going to see the empty tomb.  In Luke’s gospel, Peter goes alone, but in John’s gospel, there’s this odd competition between Peter and the “disciple whom Jesus loved” –  John gets there first, but Peter looks inside first - and after they get to the tomb and take a peek inside, they go home.  It’s Mary Magdalene who stays, and for her faithfulness is rewarded with appearances, not only of angels, but of the Risen Christ.  But she doesn’t recognize Jesus.  There are similar accounts in other gospels; Luke tells us about the two disciples on the road to Emmaus who don’t recognize Jesus over the course of a seven-mile walk and conversation – a conversation in which the Risen Christ interpreted the meaning of his own resurrection to these two disciples - until they are at table with Jesus and he breaks the bread.   Later in John’s gospel, the disciples are fishing - unsuccessfully – and it is not until Jesus tells them where to cast their nets and they pull up a big haul of fish that they recognize Jesus. 

Would we do any better?  To me, it’s a bit ironic that so few recognized Jesus after his resurrection, because today,  Jesus is one of the most recognizable icons in our culture.  Seemingly everyone has an idea what Jesus looks like.  You know the general look – long face, white, blond or light brown hair, blue eyes, generally looks “sensitive”.  Or maybe sort of like Fabio.  Even those who don’t go near a church, even those who hate everything the church stands for, can see a painting or illustration and say, “Oh, that’s Jesus.” 

I’d encourage those of you who didn’t already toss your bulletin inserts to look in the bulletin at the color insert.   There are pictures on both sides of the paper, and I apologize in advance for the quality of the printouts; for any interested, I can email the original files.  The one side has four photographs that I took in February, 2015 at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built over what is said to be the place where Jesus was crucified and buried – and, of course, resurrected, which is why local Christians in Jerusalem call it “The Resurrection Church”.   I was there in February 2015, and I can testify that Jesus’ body is not there.  The other side of the insert has nine depictions of Jesus.  They are all very different, and I tried to pick a wide range of images.  Some are quite old, others are quite modern.  I think the range tells us, among other things, that when we try to depict Jesus, we consciously or unconsciously end up putting quite a bit of ourselves into the picture.  For example, to our eyes, the image of the Asian Madonna and Child may look a bit jarring.  On the other hand, given that the real earthly Jesus was a middle-eastern Jew, almost certainly dark-skinned as in the Roman mosaic photo I included, born in what is now the West Bank, Palestine, our white Jesuses are just as inaccurate – and probably just as out of place and offputting in predominantly non-white cultures.  In the center is a photo of a Salvador Dali painting that in some ways captures the ethereal quality of some of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. The images on the right side of the page are all fairly modern, and are strongly shaped by the perspective of the images’ creators.  There’s a “reward” poster of Jesus that was first printed in an American socialist publication about 100 years ago, and depicts Jesus as a low-income worker who hung out with the riff-raff of his society, and was killed by the respectable, good people of his day.  There’s a drawing called “Christ of the Breadlines” – and this is a popular motif within the Catholic Worker movement.  And then, of course, I couldn’t resist having a little fun by including a picture of Buddy Jesus from Kevin Smith’s 1999 movie Dogma. 

It is true that our sense of Jesus is shaped by our own formative experiences, our own views and life experience.  On one hand, the Christ of the Breadlines or the socialist depiction of Jesus may be anathema to some – to say nothing of “Buddy Jesus” - on the other hand, younger viewers may not resonate with the more classical depictions.    A key insight of the Quakers is that everyone has “that of God” or “that of Christ” within them.  Will that of Christ within me recognize that of Christ within you?    And will we be alert to the promptings of the Christ within each of us so that we can recognize when Christ is doing something utterly new. Or will we mistake Christ for the gardener, mistake the movement of the Holy Spirit within us for a moment of mental migraine or emotional indigestion?

The second thing that stuck me was Jesus’ instruction to Mary, after she came to recognize Jesus, “Do not hold on to me….. but go to my brothers.”  The Greek words for “don’t hold on to me”,  “mi mou aptou” are in a continuous tense, so Jesus is saying, “Don’t keep holding on to me” or “Don’t keep clinging to me.”  Jesus told her that he had not yet ascended to the Father, but that he would do so, and soon, and he wanted his followers there for the occasion.  But at that moment in the garden, Jesus was in a kind of transitional state, in flux, in development, not exactly as he had been during his earthly ministry, but not yet as he would be after he ascended to the Father.  Mary wanted to experience Jesus as she had so many times during his earthly ministry, but Jesus was telling her, gently, “don’t cling to that experience of me.  Yes, I will still be with you, but yes, I will be present with you in a different way.”  At the Last Supper in John’s gospel, Jesus had told the disciples that he would be going away, but would not leave them comfortless, that he would send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who would remind them of all Jesus had said and done.  Jesus was preparing Mary for this change in the way she would experience Jesus in the very near future.

“Don’t keep clinging to me.”  From our religious instruction as children in Sunday School or perhaps as teens in confirmation class, we come away from those experiences with some image or sense of Jesus in our minds.  And it’s very important that we raise our children and confirm our teens in the faith.  But there’s a pitfall that we or our children can take away a sense of Jesus that is so powerful in that moment – or others can impose a specific image of Jesus on us so strongly - that it doesn’t change as we or they grow older.  Perhaps we’ve seen pictures of bees or other small insects preserved in amber…and at any age, there’s a tendency to do the same thing with our faith, to take our mental image of Jesus at any given moment in time and freeze it in amber for the rest of our lives. Perhaps this is why Mary and the disciples on the Emmaus road and the other disciples fishing on the lake did not recognize the resurrected Jesus when they saw him, because they were still focused on how they understood him during his earthly ministry, and they needed time to wrap their minds around the transformed but ever present Risen Christ.  And perhaps this is why so many lose their faith as they mature into adulthood, because they are still trying to believe in the same Jesus they embraced as children or teens.  That is to say, they didn’t really lose faith in Jesus himself, but rather in the childish image of Jesus they had been carrying.  But maturing in Christ is a constant process of letting go of past experiences of Jesus in order to be open and present to God’s call in the present.  We can give thanks for the past and all it has taught us, and yet be open to God’s call today.

 “Don’t keep clinging to me.”  Mary wasn’t to cling to her memories of Jesus in his earthly ministry, but in a sense to give Jesus permission to be present with her in a different way.  And so it is with us.  We seek relationship with the Risen Christ, and to be in a relationship is to experience change.  We may have friendships that go back to our early childhood years, but as adults we surely don’t relate to those friends as we did back then.  And so it is with our faith in Christ.  As Christians we’re in the process of becoming, as Christ works within us, so the insights and understandings of yesterday may have to give way, over and over again, to the learnings of today and tomorrow.

“Whom do you seek?”  “Don’t keep clinging to me, but go to my brothers…”   May God grant us eyes to recognize Jesus, ears to hear his call, feet to take us where he is, hands to serve, and a tongue to proclaim good news.  Amen.