5-5-19 Readings & Sermon

A reading from Acts.

Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the way, men or women, he might bring them down to Jerusalem.

Now, as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.

He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?

He asked, Who are you, Lord?

The reply came, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.

The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one.

Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing.

So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.

For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Aninaus.

The Lord said to him in a vision, Aninaus, he answered, Here I am, Lord.

The Lord said to him, Get up and go to the street called straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul.

At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Aninaus come in and lay his hands on him, so that he might regain his sight.

But Aninaus answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem.

And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.

But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.

I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.

So Aninaus went and entered the house.

He laid his hands on Saul and said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored.

Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, He is the Son of God.

The word of the Lord.

O Lord my God, I cried out to you.

And you restored me to hell.

You brought me up, O Lord, from the dead.

You restored my life as I was going down to the grave.

Sing to the Lord, you servants of His.

Give any thanks for the remembrance of God's holiness.

For his wrath endures but the twinkling of an eye.

Weeping may spend the night.

But the laying comes in the morning.

While I felt secure, I said, I shall never be disturbed.

You, Lord, with your favor, made me as strong as the mountains.

Then you hid your face.

I cried to you, O Lord.

I believe of the Lord, saying, What profit is there in my blood if I go down to the pit?

Would the thus praise you, Lord, declare your wickedness?

Hear, O Lord, and have mercy upon me.

O Lord, be my helper.

You have turned my wailing into dancing.

You have put on my hat off and clothed me with joy.

Therefore, my heart sings to you without ceasing.

O Lord, my God, I will give you thanks forever.

A reading from Revelation.

I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne, and the living creatures and the elders.

They numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with a full voice.

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth, and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them singing to the one seated on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.

And the four living creatures said, Amen.

And the elders fell down and worshipped the word of the Lord.

The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John.

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jewish leaders.

Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.

After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side, and then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you.

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

When he'd said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.

If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

But Thomas, who was called the twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.

So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord.

But Thomas said to them, 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.

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them.

Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.

And then he said to Thomas, Put your hand here and see my hands.

Reach out your hand and put it in my side.

Do not doubt, but believe.

Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God.

Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you've seen me?

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.

These are written, so 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.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Something irregular happened today, which is that we read the same gospel story as we read last week.

That's not what we're supposed to do, but you realize this is about our patron saint.

And you may not know, but Thomas' day is December the 21st.

So we never really get to celebrate him on the paternal feast day.

So Jenny was willing for us to think a second time about Thomas, not because there's something she missed.

The sermon last week was fantastic, but because this is our church.

And thinking about it a couple of times, we agreed would be all right.

Now, when I get done, you may say that was not a good decision.

But I'm going to try because the truth is I'm drawn to this story deeply.

It's part of the reason I was drawn to the parish.

Because this story, I didn't know that I'll do what I want to out loud.

In my head, it makes sense.

To me, this is about the phenomenology of the resurrection.

That is, how do we experience resurrection as a body, as a church, and offer it to the world?

So consider the story, if you don't mind.

The disciples, this is on Easter Day, are locked up in a room, most likely because they're afraid they're next.

And Jesus comes up in a resurrected body, and this is important to hear.

We have a differentiation in English between resurrection and resuscitation.

Resuscitation is when you die, but you get your life back.

You will die again.

I have seen this happen at the hospital.

People die, the paddles come, heart starts again, they are resuscitated because they will die later.

This happens if you're a Navy SEAL.

Part of your training is to be intentionally drowned and resuscitated.

Usually the way resuscitation works is the point of death has to be taken care of.

That is, whatever the injury was that was behind your mortality, whether a stopping heart or a bullet wound, has to heal.

This is very different from resurrection.

You see, in the scriptures, only one person has been resurrected, and that's Jesus.

He dies, and when he comes back from the dead, does so in such a way that he will never die again.

This is how that is different from resuscitation.

And again, biblically, only Jesus has been resurrected to date.

Also different is that his wounds don't go away.

If someone thought this up, they were much more clever than I am.

I would have had those wounds close up like that, and I would have made Jesus made an iridium.

Impenetrable.

And here's the story: the resurrected Jesus comes back with the mortal wounds always there.

When he ascends to heaven, they go with him.

You can't be resuscitated without the wounds closing up.

When you're resurrected, they never do.

The disciples are afraid, they're next.

And Jesus comes through the locked door.

Now I've always imagined he sort of floats through the door, but it occurred to me this morning, maybe he just kicks the door down.

I hope so.

That's been my own experience of resurrection is someone kicks the locked door down in the moment of my fear and terror to offer me some new life.

He says, guys, have a look.

They're one over.

Then he does something that no other gospel writer does.

Jesus does Pentecost on Easter.

Do you notice?

He goes, receive the Holy Spirit today.

That's really important.

Luke's going to do it in about 35 days.

We'll celebrate it on June 9th.

But in John, John sure thinks the disciples need a second wind.

Spirit means moving air.

Jesus moves some air on them.

They breathe in.

They're recreated.

This is what John is telling us.

You're about to see an ordination if you're here May the 16th, but I'm just curious, have any of you ever seen a bishop blow on somebody when they were ordained?

Anybody seen this?

Or confirmed?

Sometimes it happens because it's from John.

I'm glad the bishop didn't blow on me.

But symbolically, this is what happens.

Alright, then along comes our patron saint, Thomas.

Notice he's called the twin.

Thomas means twin.

His other name is Didymus.

That's Aramaic.

Means twin.

Whose twin is he?

There's an old tradition, I mean from the second century, says he's the twin of Jesus.

Now you might be thinking, Mike, slow down.

Jesus didn't have a birth twin.

The tradition doesn't claim that.

The tradition claims Thomas was so much like Jesus, like they finished each other's sentences that he's like the twin.

If you know your book of John, in chapter 11, when Jesus goes to resuscitate Lazarus from the dead after three days, all the other disciples say, nah, let's not do that.

And Thomas says, Let's go and die with him.

Doubting Thomas is about 200 years old.

No, this is Thomas, the patron saint of the scientific method.

Thomas wants replicable results of resurrection.

Otherwise, this whole Easter business is a fun fact that applies to Jesus until the end of time.

So Jesus shows up with these wounds, and he says to his twin, put your finger in the marks.

Don't doubt anymore, but believe.

Trust.

Now, one thing the story is doing is saying that Jesus' resurrection was real.

That is, he wasn't a ghost.

You can't touch ghosts.

So his body comes back.

Later, the story we skipped today, Jesus eats fish.

Ghosts don't eat.

The other thing this story is saying is that, hey, it's not like Jesus on the cross just sort of swooned and went into a temporary coma and woke up.

The lamps went up into his side.

So trying to tell you this is definitely him.

There's this other story that says they thought they crucified Jesus, but they really just got Brian.

And so I don't know if you've seen this.

This is one of those old fables around the time of Jesus.

They crucified someone who looked like Jesus.

So then the real Jesus shows up and they're like, oh, he's back from the dead.

No, the story is trying to tell you this is Jesus.

His body's back.

The mortal wounds are there.

And Thomas, for whatever reason, needs to touch him.

But I want to put to you, I think the mystery of resurrection is not that the mortal wounds are there.

I think we know, we understand mortality all too well.

I think what Thomas wants imaginatively is to put his finger in the places that represent death and experience grace and life all around them.

Wouldn't that be miraculous?

I'm gonna put that to you again.

I don't think this is about Thomas proving Jesus died.

I think this is about Thomas experiencing a new life after death.

They will always be there.

Always like eternally.

Now before I do this, I I need to ask for your permission.

I would like to tell you, not in an exhibitionist way, I'd like to tell you about one of my own mortal wounds and the grace that's come around it, but I'm not gonna tell you this story for your pity or your sympathy.

So if this is okay, if I have your permission, I'm gonna give it a try.

Now, they may not have intended it to do what it did, but I experienced it that way.

And the fundamental experience I had was that there was something wrong with my body.

It was, frankly, too short and too fat and not athletic enough to be a whole person.

Lots of things came out of that.

Um, you know, it's true that when you are not home in your own body, it's really hard to be at home with anything else.

Like any of your gifts.

As a result, part of my Christian faith journey was that God might have loved me, but God didn't really like me because there was something fundamentally wrong.

So the fundamentalist message was really strong for me.

There is no good in me.

The fundamentalist message said you are inherently flawed, and when you accept Jesus, God can fix you.

I tried really hard, it didn't fix me.

Didn't take that away.

There's always something wrong.

You may or may not know this, but what you believe is what you see.

You might have four percent body fat, but if you didn't believe that, you will never see it, even when it's in front of you.

Somebody kicked the doors of my mortal wound down, started knocking, but eventually kicked them down a few years ago.

This wound is like a hole in my brain.

It's not like it's just going to close up.

Because it's formed who I am.

I didn't know if I would even take it away anymore, because if I did, I wouldn't be myself.

The grace has been given to me though, is to not be myself in spite of this wound, but to grow into myself because of this wound.

And it worked because somebody else dared to say, Mike put your finger in my wrist.

It's not like saying, Mike, you'll move on.

It's saying Mike life isn't ended, it's changed.

And that there is more to this woundedness than strictly surviving.

I know this is a little bit strange what I'm trying to say, but I think really what I'm trying to say, this is gonna sound a little heretical for a second.

On Good Friday, um, you know, Jesus dies as we do, fully human.

And for the longest time, I think I've thought, well, Good Friday is the day where Jesus understands your suffering and your pain.

I've heard that and I've preached it.

But I think the caveat came to me this Good Friday that Jesus might really not know exactly what it's like to be me.

Jesus' dad, as far as I know, didn't have Alzheimer's and he didn't adopt somebody.

As if Jesus needs to know exactly what it's like to me.

The truth is, the biggest block to resurrection in the church is having to understand somebody completely.

You ever had somebody tell you after somebody died, I know how you feel?

You do not know how I feel.

You know how feeling feels, but you don't know how I feel.

I wonder if sometimes we don't do this thing.

I understand your pain.

And tell somebody else, in so doing, something diminishing about their mortal wound, and diminish their grace.

And don't we so often say things like, you just gotta move on?

This I think is part of the phenomenology of resurrection is that we're able to tell one another, listen, you lost your spouse for 40 years.

I don't understand that.

But I understand loss.

If you're willing, gently put your hand in my side.

And I'll feel that with you.

You see, Thomas has not been resurrected, and you haven't either.

We don't know how it feels to be resurrected.

Only Jesus knows that feeling.

But we're invited to contemplate the experience.

I'm getting a little muddy here because it's not quite clear to me.

I think it's a mystery.

But what I think I want to say is that so often I've had this experience of people saying, okay, you're struggling with your parent or your child.

Yeah, that happens.

Life goes on.

Or it'll work itself out.

And I want to tell you that's another nail hole in our body.

That's not life.

Telling somebody who's struggling with their child that it'll be okay is not life-giving.

Not.

It is life-taking.

What is life-giving is saying, tell me about what that's like.

If you want the three-part instruction, it goes like this.

Tell me about that.

Here's what I heard you say.

Did I get it right?

Is there more to it than that?

Based on what you've said, number two, saying it makes sense what you've said that you feel like this.

That's called validation.

And then the third thing is to say, I imagine you might be feeling.

I imagine you might be feeling.

Did I get that right?

Is there something else?

You see, I think the biggest block we have to real resurrection is thinking we've got to handle it like everybody else did.

Last year there were at least six people in this parish who were struggling with their teenagers.

And we wouldn't dare make it public.

Because you know what happens when you go public with a struggle as a parent?

You get judged.

If you would just do this, that's not resurrection, that's a cross.

Resurrection is when I think we dare to say.

I don't know if I've got the imagery right, but I am positive that there is something wrong about us being uncomfortable with each other's vulnerability to the point that we say, don't be vulnerable.

That's like telling somebody to never love.

And we all do it different.

The question is, but we do it together.

That's how I think the church should be different.

And I put to you, that might be the experience of resurrection that Thomas needs.

And I want to tell you, I think we need that experience.

Because this life is too long to wait until we die.

Now you're going to see in the hallway when you come up and down.

I don't know, I don't want to flatten this.

There is a beautiful exhibition that I think is exactly about this idea.

In the middle of poverty, there is this life.

Look at those faces and those colors.

Those are from some of the poorest countries in the world.

And don't you see, it's not in spite of their foibles and their cracks, it's because of them that this new life and this new grace can be possible.

Of course, that calls into question how we treat people in those countries.

But not because they're not enough or they're to be pitied, but because they are human beings in need of and living resurrection experiences.

And again, we have that opportunity to be such a place.

Not that it goes around as exhibitionists saying everybody look everybody look here, look at this.

But be willing to go there and stand at the foot of one another's cross.

And sometimes to kick down the doors and say, let me bring some grace to you.

And if we dare to do it, don't you see?

We'll be following our patron saint and replicating results of God's larger life for one another and for ourselves.

Right now.