We Are Bearers of the Peace of the Risen Christ

The Rev. Kathi Johnson

Easter 2 – 23 April 2017

Text: John 20:19-31

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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Happy Easter! It is still Easter today, and, in fact, for several more weeks we will be in the Easter season. Over this Easter season, we will spend time looking at the ways Christ is with us – exploring the theme of Christ’s presence with us.

Today’s Gospel lesson is one of two stories of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances that we hear this Easter season. Next week, we’ll hear about the risen Jesus meeting some people on the road to Emmaus. Today, we have the story of Jesus appearing to his disciples who are hiding away behind locked doors on Easter evening, and then, he appears to them again, a week later.

Today’s Gospel lesson from John 20 picks up the Easter story from last week. At this point, Jesus has appeared to the women, who’ve passed on the message of the resurrection to the other disciples. The text puts us in the evening of the first day of the week, so the evening of the resurrection. The disciples are hiding behind locked doors because their Teacher and Lord has been executed, and they are frightened that the authorities may come for them, too.

And then there’s the matter of them not really knowing or understanding what the women have told them about seeing Jesus, risen from the dead.

You can see why they might be afraid, and hiding behind locked doors.

Then, there is Jesus, standing among them. He bids them his peace, and they are filled with joy at seeing him again. There is then a beautiful moment of commissioning, as Jesus breathes on them – literally in-spiring the Holy Spirit into his disciples – breathing the Holy Spirit into them.

Thomas isn’t there on that evening, and so later, when the disciples tell him they’ve seen Jesus, he has his doubts. A week later, Jesus shows up again, and this time, Thomas gets to see Jesus himself.

If something is too good to be true, it probably is, right? We are taught to be suspicious - or at least very careful – especially in our day and age of email scams and other nefarious activities. Exercising caution can be a very good thing, at times, but I wonder how our suspicion affects our faith? How did Thomas’ suspicion affect his faith? Maybe Thomas had just been hoodwinked one too many times to believe that Jesus had really risen from the dead.

But as much as we like to cajole Thomas as the doubter of the group, the text shows that Jesus lovingly gives to Thomas exactly what he needs in order to move from doubt to faith. Thomas needs to see Jesus, and to touch Jesus, so – there Jesus is, in the flesh. When Jesus says to Thomas, “Do not doubt but believe,” this is an invitation by Jesus – an invitation for Thomas to step deeper into faith.

And Thomas does just that, calling Jesus “My Lord and my God!” – a true confession of his true faith.

For us, then, one of the lessons of this story is not how to have perfect faith, but rather that Jesus meets us wherever we are in faith, and lovingly breathes the Holy Spirit into us, so that we may have relationships with God that are meaningful and fruitful. Martin Luther said it beautifully in his Small Catechism: “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him…” He goes on to explain that this belief – our very faith in Jesus – is the work of the Holy Spirit in each of us, and even throughout the whole Christian Church. It is the Spirit’s work.

One of the real challenges for us is that we don’t have Jesus here, in the flesh, the way Thomas did. We can’t physically place our hands into Jesus’ wounded side or put our fingers into the nail holes in Jesus’ hands.

But Jesus calls us “blessed” for that very reason. In talking with Thomas, he says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” That’s us! We don’t have the same proofs of faith experienced by those first disciples – yet we have their witness, and the witness of countless others. We also have the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion – acts wherein God meets us in water, bread, and wine. And we have each other, and we have the witness of brothers and sisters in faith all over the world.

Consider the witness of Coptic Christians in Egypt. On Palm Sunday this year, they gathered for worship as is the custom of Christians all over the world. In two of their churches, bombs inside and nearby killed scores of people. And yet, the very next Sunday, they gathered again to remember the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday.

Surely the risen Christ is with them as they begin to recover from tragedy. Surely the Holy Spirit is with them as they offer their witness to the world. They walk by faith – faith in a risen Christ who has destroyed death by dying himself and being raised to new life again.

“Peace be with you,” Jesus says to his disciples on that Easter evening, and he says that to us, too. Whenever we come to the table to receive his body and blood, we are his guests, recipients of the very love of God. “Peace be with you,” Jesus says, but he doesn’t stop there, he continues by saying, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Like our brothers and sisters in Egypt, and elsewhere, we are the bearers of the peace of the risen Christ.

We have peace because Jesus is risen – it is peace that surpasses all human understanding at times, but that peace is ours because Jesus is risen. Alleluia.

Amen.

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Everyone is Somebody to God

Lent 3 – 19 March 2017

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

So asked the poet Emily Dickinson, musing about the difference between being a Nobody and being a Somebody. The world is full of Nobodies and Somebodies, it seems, and in this world, the woman at the well who meets Jesus is a Nobody. We don’t even get to know her name!

At the time of Jesus, this woman – as a woman - would’ve had no real power over her life – certainly not over her marital situation. She didn’t have any control over being born a Samaritan, either, and that she was a Samaritan made her even more of a Nobody. Samaritans didn’t follow the True Religion – which made them automatically suspect – so, on the basis of religion, she was a Nobody, too.

So, there is Jesus, traveling along through Samaria, and he decides to take a rest by Jacob’s well. This Nobody woman comes along, and Jesus asks her to draw up some water for him to drink. The fact that Jesus even speaks to her is tremendous. To us, it is no big deal. He’s thirsty – why not ask for a drink from the person who has the bucket? But in speaking to this woman – especially in speaking to her alone – Jesus is crossing gender, ethnic, and religious boundaries.

But Jesus doesn’t stop with asking for water. They begin conversing, this Jewish teacher and this Samaritan Nobody – all about springs of water gushing up to eternal life, and about her marital history, and in all this, she begins – slowly, at first – to see the truth about Jesus. She realizes finally that she is speaking with the Messiah, the One promised by God.

This is when the story is getting good!

But then the disciples come back, and the text tells us that they are astonished to see Jesus speaking with a woman. But they don’t say anything to the woman or to Jesus, and the woman does just as these men have done when they became disciples of Jesus – she leaves what she has (her bucket of water). As one of my seminary professors wrote in her commentary about the book of John: “The woman doesn’t get a husband, but instead gets a new job.”[1] She runs to the city and begins to tell people all about Jesus.

And then the text gives us a gift – especially for those of us who’ve had our ministry questioned because of our gender or ethnicity. The text gives us a gift by saying: “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.”

Because of her testimony, many Samaritans come to believe in Jesus. And in the Gospel of John, belief isn’t just a head thing or even just a heart thing – belief is a relationship thing. To say that the Samaritans believed in Jesus has more of the sense that they began their relationship with him as his disciples. Because of her testimony, Jesus stays with them for a couple of days – which shows this relationship that is developing between Jesus and this group of Nobodies.

Our story today wraps up with the Samaritans declaring, “We know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

And they could’ve added – “The savior of the whole world, even us, the ones who’re called ‘Nobodies.’”

This story, then, is a living-out of what Jesus has just proclaimed in John 3: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” This story also humanizes a group of people who were largely despised in the First Century: the Samaritans. It humanizes them by showing Jesus’ willingness to talk with them, listen to them, spend time with them, be in relationship with them – in the flesh.

And God uses the testimony of the woman at the well to do all this work.

There are times in my life when I’ve received the word of God from a surprising source – maybe words of forgiveness spoken by someone I’ve hurt, or words of assurance spoken at a time when I was faltering, or words of peace spoken into a time of conflict, or words of truth spoken in the midst of lies. At other times, even before I was a pastor, I was the one whom God used to speak those surprising words to someone else – words of forgiveness, or assurance, or peace, or truth.

Just imagine that to which God may be calling you. Now, maybe going out and talking about Jesus willy-nilly to strangers isn’t your gift. But you can show yourself to be a person of faith, and as a person of faith, you can bear witness to Jesus through your words and actions. As a person of faith, you can be the one to offer surprising words of forgiveness, or assurance, or peace, or truth. As a person of faith, each one of us has something we can share or show about God’s love. There are no Nobodies – not one.

God’s vision is so much bigger than our own vision, and God’s love is bigger than our own love. “God so loved the world…” even those whom the world calls “Nobodies,” for everyone is Somebody to God.[2]

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[1] The Very Rev. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John. Published by Morehouse Publishing, p. 62.

[2] The “Nobody”/”Somebody” language came from Deborah J. Kapp’s essay for this Sunday in Feasting on the Word, Kindle Location 20029.

You are witnesses of these things

Ascension Sunday - Year A

Text: Luke 24:44-53

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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Grace and peace be with you, from God our Father, and from his beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Humanity has a fascination with ascension. I’m not talking here about the ascension of Jesus – we’ll get to that in a minute – but rather, I’m talking about our fascination with flight – with ascension – with things that ascend or rise.

Two Christmases ago, our first Christmas in North Texas, Steve gave me a purple martin house. It took us two days to put the blessed thing together. Steve went out and got a pole and put the thing up. And as the weather warmed up, we waited. And waited.

Nothing.

A few sparrows eventually did some poking around in the house but we didn’t see one blessed purple martin last year – not one.

So imagine my delight this year when one day, Steve and I were outside, and I finally saw a purple martin, swooping around the house, dive-bombing, and I heard it singing its song. I watched, fascinated, as this bird swooped up, and fell down, and swooped up, and fell down. Finally, it swooped up, up, and away, going off to check out the rest of the neighborhood and maybe get some dinner.

The purple martins have moved in now, and so I often see (and hear) them out there, and when I have the chance, I watch. I watch them swoop up and fall down.

We are fascinated with ascension – fascinated that something can seemingly defy the gravity that holds us down so heavily – the very idea captures us and doesn’t let us go.

So today is Ascension Sunday – the day upon which we hear about Jesus ascending into heaven and, even though we may be fascinated with ascension, when it comes to the Ascension of Jesus, I’m not sure we really think about what Jesus ascending into heaven really means. If you look in your bulletin on page 6, up at the top, in the creed – there it is: “On the third day he rose again, he ascended into heaven…” We say these words each week, as the Christian Church throughout time has said them, over and over, and so they must mean something, right? They must be important in some way.

In today’s gospel lesson, we hear about Jesus opening the minds of the disciples in order that they can finally understand what the Scriptures have said about him – that he is the Messiah, the long-awaited one, the one who “is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations…” He is it. In him, God is up to something wondrous and powerful, for in him, God is setting all things aright.

And then, they all go on a little walk, and Jesus blesses them and then, he is carried up into heaven.

Acts chapter 1 gives us another little piece of the Ascension story (Acts probably being a sequel, of sorts, to the gospel of Luke) – that these men in white robes show up, as the disciples are still standing there, trying to watch Jesus ascend – fascinated with the ascension. These two men in white robes appear – presumably they are angels – messengers sent by God – and the men in white robes ask the disciples, “Why are you standing here, looking into heaven?” - as if to prod them to action, or to awaken them from some dream.

And maybe it is at this point that the disciples remember what Jesus has said to them: that they are to go to Jerusalem and wait – wait until they have been “clothed with power from on high” – wait until the promised Holy Spirit shows up (which happens on Pentecost – which we celebrate next weekend). And so the disciples return to Jerusalem and their focus is worship, blessing God, and prayer.

And that is how the Christian Church came into being: worship, blessing God, and prayer.

Professor Mikael Parsons at Baylor University says this about the Ascension of Jesus: “The departure of Jesus inaugurates the beginning of the church – the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the beginning of worldwide mission.” That’s what the Ascension of Jesus does. It serves as a launching pad – as a new beginning – and the world will never be the same.

For Jesus says one other little thing in his final speech before ascending off into heaven. Six words: “You are witnesses of these things.”

“You are witnesses of these things,” he says to those disciples before ascending into heaven, and in their case, they actually were witnesses of his life, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension. They witnessed – they saw – these things. And yet, they didn’t only see these things happen. Where on earth would we all be if all they had done was seen these things, gone home, shut their doors, eaten their suppers, and gone to bed?

They were witnesses of these things, and as witnesses, they were sure to tell the stories. They told the stories of Jesus over and over, until they were written down, and collected into what we call the New Testament, so that others could read and be witnesses to these things. And through the centuries, the witness of these disciples comes to us.

“You are witnesses of these things.” You! If you’re starting to read the Bible in 90 days today, you’re going to read the whole biblical witness, starting before Jesus, from the very beginning. (If you’re not reading the Bible in 90 days, I encourage you to read more of the Bible this summer than you normally do…) Regardless, you are here, you are hearing the stories of Jesus during worship – you are gathering around his table and receiving his meal. You are witnesses of these things.

As Lutherans, we might be a bit uncomfortable talking about “witnessing” but I tell you that being a witness to Jesus does not mean having to shove a Bible down someone’s throat or walking around with a halo on your head. Sometimes being a witness to Jesus means simply being there when someone needs help. Or telling someone you’ll be praying for whatever difficulty they are having. Or gathering with others here and making cards for people like my little granny, who – by the way – had your beautiful cards – your witness – all laid out for me to look at when I arrived in Florida a couple of weeks ago.

You are witnesses of these things.

As Christians, yes, we gather for worship and to bless God and to pray. We find our strength and our hope in these things, but we are also witnesses to the love and mercy of God – God who, in Jesus Christ, offers forgiveness and life – to us and to all.

You are witnesses of these things.

Amen.

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