Gospel- John 20:19-31
Grace and Peace to you from God our Loving Creator, and from Jesus the Risen Christ, Amen.
Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed! Happy Easter everybody.
That’s right, Easter is here for the next 40 some days and if I were your pastor I would be telling you Happy Easter all the way until Pentecost. Not sure if Pastor Rob will do that, but you can tell him that the practice comes highly recommended by a certain liturgical Lutheran.
It’s Easter, a time of celebration of new life, and of new possibilities. And, oh the possibilities that were in front of the disciples after that Easter morning. Their Messiah had just died, with strange news of a resurrection, and with unfounded fears of the people around them. With locked doors, a sense of fear and doubt, the resurrected Savior appeared before them. Jesus tells the disciples, “Peace be with you”. Except Thomas. Poor Thomas. Jesus leaves before Thomas arrives.
Thomas at this moment will forever get the metaphorical ‘short end of the stick’. Always discounted for being ‘Doubtful’. Forever known as ‘Doubting Thomas’. But confirming one’s belief is not a bad thing. Looking for proof in any belief is a natural human reaction. Thomas just watched his friend die a couple days earlier. This friend who performed miracles, healed and fed those outside the margins. To watch his Messiah die at the hands of the Romans? Like everyone else who died at the hands of the Romans at the end of a spear or cross… Dead was dead. So, Thomas probably had every right to question what the disciples saw.
So, a week later, Jesus came to the disciples again, complete with Thomas. Jesus comes in and gives all of them the same greeting he did before. “Peace be with you”. Jesus gives Thomas a chance to confirm his belief. He blesses them, and the author says one of my favorite phrases in the bible. “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.” (John 20:30-1 NRSV)
This phrase is very similar to the author’s last words in the Gospel, “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25 NRSV)
I told Ben that I would make a Star Wars reference just for him. And I may yet, Mr. Frodo. I may yet. But at the moment, I’d like to interject that one cannot be a fan of Star Trek, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings without the possibility of noticing the Messianic Easter themes throughout.
At the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Capt. Kirk is lamenting the loss of his best friend, Spock. As the camera pans across the sun rising over the new Genesis planet, Kirk’s voiceover is heard saying, “All is well. And yet I can't help wondering about the friend I leave behind. There are always… possibilities, Spock said. And if Genesis is, indeed, life from death, I must return to this place again."
It’s not spoiling anything for a more than 30 year old movie, but one of the possibilities that comes out of launching Spock’s dead body to a regenerating planet is the resurrection of Spock in Star Trek III. Which leads Spock to appear in six more adventures with the crew of the USS Enterprise. There are always possibilities.
As Christians, we believe in the empty tomb, the risen Christ with holes in his hands and side. As the Gospel writer wrote, there are many more things that Jesus did in the presence of his disciples, and many more things for humanity after his ascension. But that’s a sermon for later.
What do we do when a friend of ours dies? Or a job ends, or our community is lost, or on the verge of something new… What do we do? Where does our hope lie?
As a Lutheran, the storied history of the modern Lutheran Church in the United States is one of disparate groups of ethnic churches originating from their home churches in Europe. In time, these smaller denominations united and divided over one thing or another, and with every combining, another denomination broke off. To the point that there are many Lutheran denominations across the country that exist solely because the originators of the denomination opposed one agreement or another.
Most recently, one of the denominations that make up the Lutheran CORE started because they opposed the mainline Lutheran body, the ELCA, and their decision to be in full communion with the Episcopalians. The other started because they opposed the agreement to allow queer folks like me the (limited) *possibility* of being ordained.
Division and unity is the story of the Lutheran church in the United States. It’s what you get when a rowdy monk gets angry at the pope and accidentally starts a war and accidentally a church and a help motivate a movement that would spread across Europe, and eventually across the English Channel and Scandinavia and eventually across the Atlantic to form the many Protestant churches including the Lutheran and Methodist Churches… in a very synthesized shrunken version of the last 500 years of Protestant Church History…
Death and resurrection is the reality of Easter. They are the truth that Thomas was seeking. They are recurring themes in Church histories and realities. Death and resurrection find themselves embedded in modern stories of galaxies far far away, or in space - that final frontier, or even in Middle-Earth. This reality of Easter that Thomas was seeking, is the truth we profess every time we gather for worship.
This truth that we profess, is of a risen Messiah that said “Peace, be with you” to his disciples a few days after he just died. The risen Messiah who spent his life preaching, teaching, feeding, and healing the people on the margins of society. The risen Messiah who gathered people together, had a dozen close friends who had simple trades, and he asked them to give it all up for him.
It’s a risk that we all take when we proclaim this truth. But everyone, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, whatever… everyone should have the sacred right to proclaim their truth in their place of worship without fear of violence. Our Christian truth of a radical Messiah that lived, died and rose again has spread throughout the world, because of the possibilities that were laid out for the disciples in that locked room. For after appearing to his disciples, the disciples went out into the world proclaiming their truth together.
Christ dying and rising again proves that death presents possibilities for the living. That even in death, there is new life.
My older brother is a pastor in southern Minnesota. Last weekend, on Easter Vigil, celebrating one of the oldest Christian traditions of baptizing on Easter Vigil, my niece was baptized. In water from a white, wooden coffin.
I was utterly shocked when he did this. I was blown away by the depth of the imagery inherent in using a coffin for a baptismal font. The traditional manner of burial being used for our traditional manner of welcoming new life into the family of God… There was the image of death and resurrection right there. Life from death. “There are always… possibilities, Spock said.”
All of that, is to say this: I don’t know what the future will bring for this congregation. I know that Lutherans have seen this before, as have the Methodists. I know that this congregation has been a bedrock of the community for a very long time, and taking the history of Bemidji United Methodist with the recent decisions of the General Conference, I have hope in what comes from the death of bad decisions. As a transgender pastor-to-be, I have hope and confidence that this congregation will weather this storm in the name of justice. Allow this time of new life, to maybe poke the holes of what has occured. Live in this time of grief, of wondering what is, and what will be. How you want to continue and who you want to be known as - all of these things are up to you.
Throughout my struggles with my path to being pastor the last few years, in the death of a dream that was ordination after graduation, I’ve had this final Star Wars quote running in my head ever since Rogue One came out. “Rebellions are built on hope”.
Going against the grain, declaring yourself a welcoming congregation in the face of continued denial of basic human rights from the General Conference? That’s nothing short of rebellion, in my eyes.
Poke the holes of your suspicions. Hold onto the truth of life after death. Together, I have confidence that Bemidji will be better for it.
Amen.
Bonus!
Audio clip of the sermon - https://soundcloud.com/user-590479312/worship-01-28-19#t=24:24
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