CEaster2

Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 150; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

April 15, 2007

A quote from former Presiding Bishop Ed Browning:

It seems to be part of our essential humanity

to live in the midst of great change

and the breaking forth of new ways

without taking a serious measure of what is unfolding around us.

In other words,

we have an innate ability to lengthen our necks

and like the ostrich stick our heads in the sand.

If we don’t acknowledge it, it isn’t real!

That apparently is what had happened to the disciples.

Despite everything that had taken place before Jesus’ trial and death,

the times they had been warned what would happen –

and been told he would rise from the dead,

they were, on that first Sunday morning,

not able at first to take a serious measure of what was unfolding

right in front of them.

As long as we can avoid full belief and awareness of something,

we can remain disconnected from it.

As long as we can be unaffected by change,

then we can remain unchanged ourselves.

A few years ago, my friend Margaret Cooksey and I

had the chance to meet for dinner.

We had raised our children together in Live Oak, Florida,

and then she and her family ended up in Tallahassee,

and my family and I were in Jacksonville.

She called me up to say she’d be over in Jacksonville

and could we get together for a meal.

Once we were seated at the restaurant

and had the chance to catch up with each other,

I started to tell her about a mutual friend of ours who had terminal cancer.

I barely said, “I have something difficult to tell you about so and so,”

and she stopped me and said “You can’t do that to me now!

You’re going to have to wait and tell me after dinner.”

And she took our conversation into all its usual warm and funny places,

catching up on our families, our jobs,

and those events and details of our lives

that spill out so safely and easily with a good friend.

I was kind of surprised at this, but went with it…

and ended up telling her about our friend after dinner,

in the parking lot, as we sat in her car.

Margaret stopped me because she knew

that whatever I was going to say would change our evening,

shift the conversation, take us to a different place.

Shift Happens – (website)

When I was at my niece’s house in Atlanta

Enjoying a barbeque with out-of-town family,

My 16 year old nephew mentioned a piece on the internet called:

Shift Happens.

He took me over to the computer, googled it, and it began to play.

25% of the people in China with the highest IQ’s

equals the total population of the U.S.

China will soon be the #1 English speaking country in the world.

Today’s learner will have an average of 10 to 14 jobs.

The top 10 jobs in the year 2010 did not exist in 2004.

We are preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist

using technologies not yet invented

to solve problems we don’t yet have.

One out of every eight couples married in the U.S. last year

met on line.

I just want to enjoy the barbeque!

Chapter 20 in John’s gospel is about that first Easter morning

when those closest to Jesus, person by person,

begin to wake up to what has happened.

One by one they begin to connect with the present reality that he has risen.

They make the connection with what he has been telling them.

The anonymous “beloved disciple” of Jesus goes into the tomb,

We are simply told that “he saw and believed.”

Mary Magdalene remains at the tomb

after the beloved disciple and Peter go back home.

She gives way to her deep grief and the trauma of the past days,

and now this new blow, that Jesus’ body must have been stolen.

she stands weeping outside the tomb, immobilized.

When the risen Jesus appears to her and calls her by name,

she herself comes alive and puts it all together.

And she runs to tell the disciples that she has seen the Lord.

Thomas, also, when he sees in Jesus all at once

both his living presence and the scars of his death….

It all clicks together.

Thomas believes and responds by saying,

My Lord and my God.

There is strong opinion that verse 31:

“these are written so that you may come to believe…

And through believing you may have life in his name.”

is the original ending of John’s gospel.

One moment, one instant, of seeing and believing

can change a person for eternity.

When Jesus meets the disciples in the upper room

where they have separated themselves from all that has gone on,

he gives them his peace

which brings them to the present,

to the here and now with him.

The deep peace of God gathers and unites us, stills us, rests us

into one place, one mind, one heart.

And he gives them his breath.

That ancient understanding of being breathed upon comes in clear.

To receive breath is to receive life essence and power.

God breathed over creation.

Creation houses God’s essence and God’s power.

God breathed into the human’s nostrils the breath of life;

And we became living beings. (Genesis 2:7)

We house God’s essence and God’s power.

Psalm 104: 29-30

When you hide your face, they are dismayed;

When you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.

When you send forth your spirit, they are created;

And you renew the face of the ground (the earth).

Jesus breathes on those in that locked room with him:

Receive the Holy Spirit.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

I have been sent for repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

I leave you with the power to change and the power to forgive, to release.

Some folks tend to think that we are being presumptuous

when we assert that we’ve been given power and authority in Christ.

That we house that which has power and authority over death.

That there is a flaw in elevating ourselves to such stature.

It’s quite a stretch to say we are the hands and feet and heart and mind of Christ.

To use the royal imagery of scripture:

That we have been made a kingdom of priests to serve our God.

That we are citizens of a kingdom,

children of a king who rules over the nations.

Well, first, let us remember that to identify with Christ

and claim kinship with him,

we become servants like him,

and we give up what we think we have owned.

Then, to be in the same room with Christ,

To be enveloped in his peace, filled with his Spirit/breath

Means we relinquish that locked door that we live behind,

that contains our unchanged realities.

Charles Filmore:

Thomas – understanding

Understanding and will should function in union.

Jesus quickens the bodies of people

who attract his presence by believing in him.

He radiates a glorious life that energizes those who believe in his power.

Browning:

The church has a responsibility that is nurtured and informed by the personal relationship each of us has with God. We speak to our hearts in silence upon our beds, as the psalmist says, but then we get up and remember that we are part of a church that has been sent. “As the Father sends me, so I send you.”

Peter and the apostles leave their nets and end up in Jerusalem where Peter boldly says: We must obey God rather than any human authority. We are witnesses to these things, and so it the Holy Sprit whom God has given to those who obey him. (Acts 5:32)

John of Patmos gave glory “to Jesus who loves us and freed us, to him be glory forever.”

And proclaimed that “He is the beginning and the end.”

According to legend and some evidence, Thomas went to India,

and founded the Church there.

We’ll close with a quote from the Gospel of Thomas:

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

And so, we’ve been given a life-giving, life-changing, life-challenging

message.

And we ARE blessed to receive it and have the capacity to believe it

without having been there to see the actual scars

with Thomas and the disciples in that locked room.

If we have rested in his peace,

been filled with his Spirit/essence/breath,

(“One moment in his presence has changed my life for eternity.”)

we are alive and we must bring him forth.