Sermon April 15, 2007

(Jimmie Johnson)

Revelation 1:4-8

John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the
firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who
loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a
kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

John 20:19-31                                    

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 Jews,
Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. 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 had 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 he 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.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger 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 have 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.
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.

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There are so many responses the Risen Christ could have made to his followers when he appears to them. He could have said, “Shame on you.” He could have said, “How disappointed I am in you.” “Why did you abandon me?” “Why don’t you have more faith?”

Christ in this appearance story could have said  all these responses and more. Yet, what are his first words to his unfaithful, fearful, flawed, confused,  doubting followers: “Peace be with you.”

This is huge. This is the epicenter of Easter faith. These are the most important words of Easter whether you interpret the text as history or as parable. The first words from the mouth of the Risen Christ in the story which John gives us are the words, “Peace be with you.” He blesses them! He reassures them. He says what we believe is the most important of all our beliefs: there is always more mercy in God than sin in any one of us or all of us. There can be no other interpretation of the words, “Peace be with you.” God’s mercy is more potent than our sins.

As I said last Sunday, “Easter always begins in the darkness of our lives,
not at the time when we by our efforts have made our lives full of sunshine.”

If Don Imus were in worship here this morning, we would, more than anything else, want him to know the most important thing
about him is God’s love which issues in God’s peace toward him.
If Rev Al Sharpton were here this morning, we would want him to leave this service convinced the most important truth about him was God’s love and peace for him.

If the Rutger’s womens’ basketball team were here we would want them leaving with the good news that the most important pronouncement
ever spoken about them for all their lives is the Easter Greeting: “Peace be with you.”

If we didn’t want these outcomes, we would not really be Easter people.
We would not believe redemption is more powerful than our sins. But we do believe redemption is more powerful. This would not negate our paying the societal consequences. We could still lose our job.
Lose our good name. Our support base. We would still face the hard work
of rebuilding our disgraced public face.

But still, Easter faith pronounces a new life with a new beginning
is our’s to receivein relationship to God.

How would our lives be different if the most important thing we believed
about ourselves was not our guilt, not our fear, not our doubts,
not our accomplishments and successes,but that we are loved of God?
We would be so much more rested, for one thing. We would be capable of looking outward at others, for another. We would be raised up out of our ego’s fascination with either our failures or our triumphs. We would have a life larger than our own small horizons. A sense of God’s participation in our lives at every moment. We would discover the palace within our soul which is unlocked by love. We would indeed be God’s instrument of peace.

I do have a question for you though. How did they know they could trust
the Risen Christ’s words of peace?

The story artistically and beautifulls reveals:
     “After he had said this, (Peace be with you.) he showed them
      his hands and his sides...”
In other words, the Risen Christ doesn’t show them a miracle, an act of sheer power. He doesn’t show off. He doesn’t brag at what has happened,
how he is so important that God  has raised him up. He doesn’t in anyway distance himself from their smallness. Instead, he shows them his wounds.
He links himself to them in their own woundedness

This is a theological way of saying,  God becomes weak in power in order
to become strong in love. God’s power is not the avoidance of pain
and suffering. God’s power is not about how different God is from us.
Rather, God’s power is about how humble and loving and compassionate God is because God will never forget the woundednessof our own humanity.

The Risen Christ in keeping his wounds has brought our hurt humanity
into God’s eternal experience and memory. These wounds indicate no intention to harm.

Instead, they gently reveal God’s power is perfected in our weaknesses.
God’s grace inhabits our suffering to make it God’s own suffering
in and through us.

Recovering alcoholics feel an instant rapport with other recovering alcoholics. A parent whose child has cancer feels immediately close to other parents of kids with cancer. They come to know community.
It is the fellowship of the wounded. This is what Christ is disclosing.

God’s holiness, God’s almightiness, God’s glory, God’s power is not that God is unmoved, unfeeling, unaffected, but is so tender in God’s desire to be close to us that God keeps the wounded experience of what it is to be broken, betrayed and harmed in God’s permanent memory not to condemn or shame us, but until the Day when there will be no more wounds in any one nor in all of creation. The Easter Greeting reverses all our dread.

When you come into the fellowship of this congregation known as First Presbyterian you are coming into a church which will not let you make guilt your last stronghold against God. No, we will insist Sunday in and Sunday out, our guilt is not as real, permanent, eternal, nor everlasting as God’s love. We will tell you to get over trying to have standards higher than God.

We will not let you live in fascination with your accomplishments, your looks, your community status, your investment portfolio.

No, we will insist Sunday in and Sunday out, the most authentic thing about you is you are loved of God and we will push you toward a joyful desire to live up to that good news.

We also will not let you keep ripping the scab off your wounds so you stay infected with pain and unable to reach out and minister to others.
No, we will remind you Christ kept his wounds so your’s can heal.
All the losses of your life and all the injustices, you need not keep them alive. Christ will not forget them.

Christ will keep them until all has been transformed and made
graceful. This is what becomes oh so clear in the baptism of baby Joe today. In our helplessness. In our smallness. In our total dependancy, we are loved. “Peace be with you.”  Every moment of your life and even in the moment of your death, God pronounces a blessing, a benediction over you. “Peace be with you.” You and I must trust this is the epicenter
of Christianity.

At birth, small and vulnerable like baby Joe, all of us were child-like
and reality is that if we live long enough most of us by the time of death
will have become child-like again. Some will face the challenge of parenting their parents. Or, we will ourselves be parented by our own children or spouse or a paid care giver or friend because before death
time and aging often bring us back to childhood again. But even when we can no longer remember due to dementia or death:

God will remember: “Peace be with you.”