April 30, 2006
(Third Sunday of Easter)
The Upper Room
by
The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
Acts 4:5-12 or Micah 4:1-5 • Psalm 98 or 98:1-5 •
1 John 1:1-2:2 or Acts 4:5-12
• Luke 24:36b-48
(From
The Lectionary Page)
Today marks our third consecutive Sunday of resurrection accounts. And the way Luke tells the story, I’m thinking it was a pretty pathetic bunch huddled together in that upper room. Peter was there, claiming to have seen the risen Lord. But hey, this was the same guy full of bluster who vowed he’d never betray Jesus and then did it not once but three times. Cleopas and his companion had just shown up, claiming to have seen the risen Lord on the way to Emmaus, recognizing him in the breaking of the bread. Clearly, those two were as nuts as the women. They also had claimed to have had a conversation with the risen Lord. Yeah, right. Man! Just a few days ago they'd had the world by its tail! Jesus had been acclaimed king of kings by those who had welcomed him to Jerusalem. He was supposed to be the Messiah, the one who would usher in a new kingdom and they – ordinary guys from Galilee – were going to be his right-hand men, cloaked in glory.
But now their lives were in the latrine and stories of the risen Lord were little more than a cruel joke to them. I mean, come on! They had abandoned and had been abandoned. Even if the wild stories were somehow true, what on earth would Jesus want to have to do with them now? Or worse – what if the stories were true and Jesus was back to wreak vengeance on them for their betrayal and cowardice? It doesn't take much imagination to guess the cocktail of emotions they were experiencing: grief, fear, guilt, shame, bewilderment, a little self-pity thrown in for good measure.
And into this miasma of misery, Jesus appeared, and bade them peace.
I want that to just sort of settle over you for a moment. Jesus had every reason to storm into that room and let them have it. That’s what most of us would do. That’s certainly what a God of vengeance would do. But Jesus bade them shalom – the peace that is more than the absence of hostility. Shalom is the peace where all is complete and all is good. He authenticated his identity and then did something incredibly mundane – asking for a piece of fish to show that he was no ghost, no disembodied spirit bent on vengeance as the Gentiles would think – but the resurrected Lord. Right there, in the upper room that was a veritable junkyard of screwed-up emotional and spiritual baggage, Jesus brought new life.
And if that wasn't enough, he did something else even more remarkable. He claimed them as his own and prepared them for promotion. The guys who had let Jesus down were going to become apostles – a promotion that would ultimately take effect, as we know, on Pentecost. What were their qualifications? The fact that each and every one of them had blown it big time and had been forgiven. Because let's face it, who better to proclaim the good news of a Risen Christ to a hurting world than a bunch of guys who knew what it was to be hurt? Who better to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins than a bunch of guys whose sins had been forgiven? God's abundant grace and mercy, new life and new hope had been given to them, and their job as apostles was to pass it on.
It's our job too. The Church, as it began in that Upper Room with Jesus preparing his disciples to be his representatives in the world, is meant to be a forgiving community. Ironically, we've screwed that up over time. Too often, the Church misinterprets the proclamation of repentance and the forgiveness of sins to all nations to mean defining what’s wrong with other people, other cultures, other religions; suggesting that repentance is all about “them” fitting into “our” template for righteous behavior; presuming that we are somehow arbiters of God’s capacity to forgive and to love; forgetting that when it comes to betraying Christ, we all are right up there with Peter, James, and John.
The minute we lose sight of the immeasurable forgiveness that we all have received – ordained Christians and baptized Christians alike – we're apt to try to turn the Church into a clubhouse for the righteous, the good guys "in here" versus the bad guys "out there." By loving one another as Jesus loves, the Church reveals God to the world; by revealing God to the world, the Church makes it possible for the world to choose to enter into relationship with this God of limitless love. That’s repentance. That’s the Scriptures that Jesus opened to the disciples in the upper room – that God is crazy in love with the world God created, and wants nothing more than for us to be crazy in love with God and with each other.
The real mission of the faith community, as one contemporary theologian observed, is not to be the arbiter of right or wrong, but to bear unceasing witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ, a love that hangs on and hangs in no matter what. [Brian Stoffregen, www.crossmarks.com, John 20:19-31, quoting a commentary by O'Day.]
Sounds like it’s time to move out of the Upper Room.
Doubting Discipleship
by The Rev. Bruce Hall,
Deacon
In my work with young people with behavior problems, I’ve often had an opportunity to work with teens who are preparing to leave residential treatment and return home. Having spent nine to twelve months in the care and custody of the state, a young person may have experienced the support, structure, and compassion that may have been missing in their life. They look at returning to home with the mixed emotions of eager anticipation and, at the same time, fearing returning also to the old ways of behaving. The Old Self. Notwithstanding all the work they have done in experimenting with new ways of relating to others and coping with life’s problems, they still doubt their ability to succeed. Mostly, they take this as sure and certain evidence that they will “mess up” once more and are incapable of change and consigned to world as they always have know it. A world where they lose. A world where they find little that supports or loves them. A world where, in their struggle to make it, they invariably, “mess up.” They experience this doubt as the negation of everything they’ve done to change.
At these moments, I increasingly turn to something I read awhile back in a short collection of writings by the theologian Paul Tillich. No, I don’t treat my 14 year-old clients to discourses on the subtleties of Tillich’s systematic theology or his views on “finitude” Rather, I simply paraphrase the following two sentences:
“Serious Doubt is the confirmation of faith. It indicates the seriousness of concern.” [From Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, 1955, as found in The Essential Tillich, 1987, pg 26.]
I share with them that my experience has been that those who do not have some anxiety about the genuineness of their changed self are more likely to fail in living up to their plans. The ones with no worry are the ones that staff tend to worry about.
In today’s Gospel, we hear of other doubters, possibly very much like ourselves, who in the course of their lives have seen things change and struggle to believe that the wondrous thing they have witnessed is true. If we are to take the New Testament accounts seriously, we cannot escape that something supernatural, something marvelous, transcending our limited physical existence has happened. Luke and the other post-resurrection accounts consistently confront us with what appears to be direct accounts of Jesus appearances following the resurrection. The writers take pains to make clear that these appearances were not ghosts or hallucinations but the presence of one who, walked, spoke, and ate food with his disciples. We are not presented with an illusive “idea” of Jesus as though His resurrection is symbolic for some internal, psycho-spiritual rebirth or cosmic expression of our own self-actualization. This is not the transformation of a “cool” Jesus who has had some form of earthly insight. No, to be fair, the Gospels do not let us off that easy. These accounts challenge us to face the claim of the Good News that Jesus who lived, taught, and died, is risen and will never die again. This is a hard truth to face and a hard truth to believe. Some turn away convinced that this is too incredible. One contemporary writer on faith puts this dilemma well when he writes,
“When speaking of Christ, we also have to know whether we mean the historical Jesus or the living Jesus. The historical Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the son of a carpenter, traveled far from his homeland, became a teacher, and was crucified at the age of thirty-three. The living Jesus is the Son of God who was resurrected and who continues to live. In Christianity, you have to believe in the resurrection or you are not considered a Christian. I am afraid this criterion may discourage some people from looking into the life of Jesus. That is a pity, because we can appreciate Jesus Christ as both an historical door and an ultimate door. When we look into and touch deeply the life and teaching of Jesus, we can penetrate the reality of God. Love, understanding, courage, and acceptance are expressions of the life of Jesus.” [From Thich Nhat Hanh Living Buddha, Living Christ, 1995, pg. 35.]
The writer is the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh whom I quote often in homilies and whose teaching has profoundly deepened my faith in Christ and the distinctive Christian message of Jesus resurrection and the power of the resurrection to give meaning to His invitation to a new life. A new self with all the doubt that may attend it. A new self of love and compassion in a world more at home with coercion, bribery, and fraud. A new life in a world that continues to struggle with sin and death. This is hard for us to comprehend without being tempted to reduce the Gospel to a simple invitation to ethical living or something less than divine. But this is the Gospel Peter proclaimed then and to you and I tonight, “….let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead.”
This is the Gospel presented to us this evening and in every moment of our existence and we are invited now, in all our disbelieving, wondering, and perhaps even terror to step forward in courage and believe. Our faith is faith precisely because we doubt. As we make this step, we know that Jesus who died for us is with us, and as with the disciple before us, can open our minds and hearts to the truth of the resurrection. All doubts and fears may never be extinguished but I don’t believe that God hold’s that against you anymore than he did the disciples. Instead, maybe it means you’re serious about your faith and more power to you. God can handle your disbelief and you are not indicted by your doubt. Instead, you and I are bidden Peace, Shalom, by the one who made and sustains us. And it is this same living Christ who in our wondering and doubt will open our eyes of faith.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
The Lord is Risen Indeed!
