I
hope that your Easter was joyful. Rosie
and I had our kids, grandkids and our two great grandkids at our place for a
wonderful dinner created by all of them.
Rosie made the sweet potatoes!
That is such a day of
celebration. We have not only our Lord’s
resurrection, but also the beginning of Spring, with great weather and the
promise of more. I am certainly ready for
it. Winter and cold are not my favorite
things. I love sitting on the patio and
reading under the awning and feeling the breeze in my face.
What I love about our lessons as we
get into the Easter season is that this season certainly isn’t over. In the lesson from John today, Jesus’
disciples are all gathered in one room when all of a sudden, Jesus appears to
them. They are astonished. Notice how the passage begins: When it was evening, the first day of the
week and the doors of the house where the disciples met were all locked for
fear of the Jews… Here they are in their fear, waiting for who knows
what. Their Lord has been crucified and
they are afraid. But all of a sudden,
their Lord is present. He showed them
his hands and his side and the disciples rejoiced. He said to them: Peace be with you! And as the Father has
sent me, so I send you. This is
the beginning of the church. He breathes
on them and says Receive the Holy Spirit.
And he sends them out to forgive the sins that they find.
Thomas isn’t with them. When he came back to them, they told him, “we
have seen the Lord!” Thomas. told them
“unless I see the marks of the nails on his hand and put my finger in them and put
my hand in the wound in his side, I will not believe.”
A week later, they were all gathered
again and Thomas was present. Jesus
again appeared to them and spoke to Thomas:
Here, put your finger in the wounds in my hand and your hand in the
wound in my side. Do not doubt, but
believe! Thomas said, “my Lord and my God.” Then Jesus says the most meaningful thing of
all. Do you believe because you have
seen me? Blessed are those who have not
seen me, yet believe! That is you and me that Jesus is talking about.. We have only our faith to show us the
presence of our Lord in our lives. We
haven’t seen his wounds or his body lying in the tomb. All that we have are the scriptures that tell
the story and the testimony of the followers of his who so firmly
believed. That faith is what we take
with us into our lives to help us to deal with all of the things that happen to
us; to celebrate our joy and to dry our tears because of our distress. The truth is that our Lord is at our side and
we are blessed when we believe that.
We hear a lot these days about fake
news and alternative facts. This story
about Jesus’ resurrection isn’t about either of these things. It is about faith. Faith is belief without necessarily having
any facts to prove what we believe. When
I consider all of Holy Scripture, there are many places where facts are obscure
and I’m not really sure what it is that happened. What I hear in the stories is always helpful. The stories in the bible tell us truth. Most often, the facts of the story don’t
really matter.
When we were in Jerusalem, we got into a taxi
and the driver asked us if we wanted to go to the home of the Prodigal
Son. We thanked him, but declined his
offer. He didn’t know where the Prodigal
Son lived, nobody knows that. It is
simply a wonderful story in the Gospel that tells the truth about how it is
that God receives the lost back into his care.
There have been many prodigal sons. I’ve been one. Some of you have been
one! The beauty of that story is that God’s
love is eternal and applies to us all.
Where those people lived or if they really lived is not important. What matters is the truth of what that story
tells us all.
We all struggle with faith from time
to time. When things in our lives go
sour, sometimes it is hard to believe that our God loves us. We blame God when we ought to be looking at
other causes. We humans don’t always
treat each other very well. The other
thing that we experience these days is fear.
Fear that North Korea will unleash nuclear weapons; fear that the things
that have made our lives better, such as affordable health care may vanish. But
God never promised us a perfect ride; only that His Love will remain constant
no matter what it is that happens to us in our lives. Our faith is a solution to our fear. Faith connects us to the only thing that
matters: the great God who loves us completely.
Our church is a collection of people of faith. Each of us is here to help the other. That is the beauty of community.
Those disciples of Jesus, who
witnessed his resurrection and saw the wounds in his hands and in his side were
sent into the world by our Lord to forgive sin and to make the world a better
place for the people whom they met along the way. That is the same thing that Jesus did during
his whole ministry. You and I are the
descendants of those disciples. Our
mission is to do what we can to help those whom we meet in this world. When we love others, we spread the Love of
God farther into this world. What keeps
us going is our faith. Believe in the
Lord with all of your heart, soul and your mind. When you do that, all will be well.
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