John 1: 1-18 & John 20: 1-24
Resurrection of the Lord/
31st March 2013
In
John’s Gospel: seeing is believing. It’s there at the beginning, “And the Word
became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, …full of grace and
truth” (John 1:14). And did you notice
all the references to seeing in his resurrection account? The drama oscillates from clear vision to
obscured vision to no vision at all. Mary Magdalene arrived in the dark, before
light, and “saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb” (20:1). But she didn’t see what she expected to see. She
told the disciples, “I can’t find him.” Peter
and the other disciple went to the tomb.
The other disciple outran Peter, he “bent down to look in and saw the
linen wrappings lying there” (20:5).
Peter went in, “He saw the linen wrappings lying there,…” (20:6). Then
the other one went into the tomb, “and he saw and believed” (20:8). Mary was left there alone, weeping, still
searching. “She bent over to look into
the tomb,” John tells us, and then “she saw two angels in white”
(20:11-12). She explained why she’s
weeping. Then, as she spoke “she turned
around and saw Jesus standing there” (20:14), but didn’t recognize him. He said
her name and she began to see. When she heard her name she began to see
(20:15-16). She received a vision and
returned to the disciples with something to say – something the other two might
have seen had they bothered to stay on the scene long enough, instead of
running off and leaving her in a cemetery! – so she returned and exclaimed, “I
have seen the Lord!” (20:18).
The sightings continued into the
evening. Jesus walked through walls, behind
doors locked in fear, and stood among them and said, “‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands
and side. Then the disciples rejoiced
when they saw the Lord” (20:19b-20).
Poor old Thomas showed up a little late for the party. The “other disciples told him, ‘We have seen
the Lord’” (20:25). And then we have the
famous words from Thomas, Patron Saint of Doubters, “Unless I see the mark of
the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand
in his side, I will not believe” (20:25).
A week later Jesus returns – that must have been a very long week for
Thomas. Word got back to Jesus about what
Thomas said. And then we have Jesus’
famous lines, “Do not doubt, but believe. …Have you believed because you have
seen me? Blessed are those who have not
seen and yet have come to believe” (20:29).
Seeing. Not-seeing.
Believing. Doubting. The narrative is full of tension. Of course there’s a little of Thomas in all
of us, full of doubt in a skeptical, cynical age. We’re always looking for
proof, for evidence. People of faith
sometimes use Jesus’ words to Thomas as an easy way out. We’re told that we’re blessed if we have not
seen. Just believe. That is, we who are very
late to the party, we don’t have to worry about seeing, we don’t need evidence,
we don’t need to put our hands in his side, we’re just expected to believe. We’ve come to assume that belief is what
matters. The Church invites us to
believe. Just believe. Believe these things about Jesus and then one
becomes a Christian:
Son of God. Check.
Fully God, fully human. Check.
Healer, miracle worker. Check.
Preacher, prophet, teacher. Check.
Died on the cross because of human
sin. Check.
Raised three days later. Check.
Ascended to heaven, coming
again. Check.
I’m a Christian. I believe.
But do you know what?
Belief didn’t roll that stone
away.
Belief didn’t crack open the
tomb.
Belief didn’t send Mary running to
find the others.
Belief didn’t confront Peter and the
nameless disciple.
It wasn’t belief that called Mary by
name.
It wasn’t belief she heard calling
her name.
It wasn’t belief that stood within
their walls of fear.
And it wasn’t belief that breathed
on them and said, “Peace with you.”
Not belief. Experience.
Not ideas and theories and proof.
An experience of the Holy, an experience that overwhelmed them and
grabbed them, which startled and amazed them, which shattered all of their
assumptions about reality, and changed their lives.[1]
That’s an encounter that shakes our
foundations, changes the course of our lives, that leaves us never the same
again, that grants us a new future, a new horizon, and then calls us, moves us,
sends us toward that horizon, that new day, out of the old and into a new world
as different people. That’s what resurrection looks like, feels
like.
Experience is what counts. Without it all we have are empty, hollow,
lifeless ideas and doctrines and pious platitudes and a church with a faith
that has nothing to say worth listening to, that has nothing to offer, that’s
dead, dull, and boring. People have
grown tired of belief, defending belief, arguing over belief; sometimes even killing
people because of differing beliefs.
It’s no wonder that Christianity is in decline in the United States –
we’ve reduced it to an idea or an ethic.
It’s no wonder that Protestants are no longer the major Christian faith
in the country. Protestants and
Catholics are in decline, both liberal churches and conservative churches. The
results of a major survey of religion in America have shown that for the first
time in our nation’s history the largest category of religious affiliation in
the U.S. is now known as “nones,” as in “none of the above.” In the 1950s, nones made up about 2 percent
of the population. In the 1970s, it was
about 7 percent. Today, that number is
close to 20 percent. Within that 20 percent, only 30 percent are atheists or
agnostics. Sixty-four percent of the nones
say they believe in God or a “universal spirit,” but they don’t live out this
faith in a community, a church, or an institutional setting.[2]
I guess it’s nice to know they
believe in something, someone. But
somehow, someway the church needs to get the message across that what we
proclaim and witness to is beyond belief. Not in the sense that it didn’t occur, but
something other than belief, not only belief.
I’m not saying that ideas and doctrine and creeds are unimportant. They are. We will affirm the Apostles’ Creed
this morning. But what really matters is
what’s behind or underneath the creed – an experience. We have been entrusted
with something more than beliefs about
God. We have something more to offer the world beyond belief. Why does this matter? Because in a world
where people are dying and suffering, lost and confused, broken and weighed
down by grief and sorrow, belief is not enough.
Contemporary theologian Wendy Farley
reminds us, “When we conceive of Christianity as beliefs, love fades into the background….”[3]
Exactly!
For it’s Love that raises the dead
and cracks open our tombs.
It’s Love that reunites after death
has done its worst.
It’s Love we recognize when Love
calls our name.
It’s Love that stands within the
walls of our fear.
And it’s Love that breathes into us
new life and says,
“Peace” – not strife,
not anxiety, not worry, not fear –
“Peace be with
you.”
It’s the
experience of Holy Love that encounters us and shakes us and raises us and holds
us and claims us and calls us and sends us.
Not once, but again and again. For Love never ends (1 Corinthians 13:8). That’s what resurrection looks like, that’s
what resurrection feels like. It’s the
experience of Love that changes us and changes the people we meet.
The poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
wisely advised: “The soul should always
stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” What if this was our prayer,
our posture in the world? “The soul
should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” Souls that are open, ready to welcome an
experience of resurrection, an encounter with the Holy that overwhelms us with
love and overcomes us with joy, that changes us and transforms us and thus
transforms the world. Can you imagine
what a different world this would be?
Can you imagine with me a church that anticipates this, expects this to
happen?
This
is what we offer to the world: the
possibility of an experience. Love embodied.
It’s what we offer the world. Jesus
said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). And then Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive
the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). Before
Jesus’ death he said to his disciples, you’ve seen the difference I have made
in your lives, and you will do even greater works than these (John 13:
12). You see, even here, we’re not asked
to believe in something that took place a long time ago. Something is happening now. We’ve all been breathed on. Love is breathing
through us. Love is living through us. Love
is trying to love through us. You and I,
according to Jesus, have been given this Love, this breath, this power. And it’s ours to use.
Throughout the season of Lent many
of us have been reading Sara Miles’ provocative and zany book, Jesus Freak:
Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead. Raised without faith, years ago
Miles stumbled into St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, was
invited to share in Communion. She took
a bite out of the loaf of bread and her life never was the same again. She didn’t intellectually wrestle her way
into belief; she experienced the healing grace in the sacrament. Now in her life and her ministry, as a
layperson, she knows that Jesus is alive and at work in the world. At St. Gregory’s, whenever they send someone
out into the world or launch someone on a new chapter of his or her life, they
practice one of the oldest forms of blessing. Miles says, “We put our wrists on
the person’s temples, so we could feel the blood beating in both bodies, and
then we’d breathe, blowing lightly over the bent head, incarnating, once again,
the breath of the Spirit.”[4] Miles believes – she knows – that Jesus is
still breathing through us. And she
knows, and I know she’s right, that there’s more power available to us than we
are willing to imagine, there’s more Love at work in all of us than we suspect.
We are capable of so much more than we
think. If we’re honest, this probably
frightens us, which is natural. But it’s true.
Love is breathing through us.
It’s Love that launches us out into the world.
Jesus is still breathing in us and
through us, calling you and me to life.
Can you sense it? Feel it?
Yes? No? Maybe? Just a little?
It doesn’t matter – let us open our souls, ready to welcome that
ecstatic experience. Try to sense what’s
behind the creed when we off the Apostles’ Creed in a few moments. Then, with
open souls let us share in the Lord’s Supper and receive the real presence of
the Lord at his Table. The Risen Lord
who invites us to come. Believe, yes,
but more than believe, taste and really see
that God is good!
[1] Here I’m indebted to
the thought of C. G. Jung (1875-1961), “The seat of faith, however, is not
consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the
individual’s faith into immediate relation with God. Here we must ask: Have I
any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that
certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the
crowd?” Jung said, “I am not…addressing
myself to the happy possessors of faith, but to those many people for whom the
light has gone out, the mystery has faded, and God is dead.” Collected
Works 11,148. See
also James Hollis, Tracking the Gods: The
Place of Myth in Modern Life (Inner City Books, 1995).
[2] Pew Forum on Religion
and Public Life: http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx. See also Michael Gerson’s piece in the Washington Post, “An America That Is Losing Faith With
Religion.” http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-25/opinions/38008236_1_nones-protestants-agnostics
[3] Wendy Farley, Gathering Those Driven Away: A Theology of Incarnation (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 216. Emphasis mine.
[4] Sara Miles, Jesus Freak:
Feeing, Healing, Raising the Dead (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010). 114.
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