Doubting Thomas

You may listen to Mother Johnson's sermon here.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 

A wonderful, affectionate, smart, effusive little boy who happens to be a dear friend of mine drew a picture for his grandmother a few years ago, when he was very little indeed.  It was Easter, and he wanted to give her an Easter picture, so I guess he looked around and figured out what Easter was and he drew it for her.  Turns out he was a bit mixed up.  It was a picture of a crucified Easter bunny.  Yes, the Easter bunny on the cross, with Easter baskets hanging from his outstretched paws.  My little friend was trying earnestly, but he really didn’t get it.

Or maybe in one sense he did.  It may not be biblical, but the picture does unintentionally capture something important about the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus.  It captures the way our understanding fails us when we try to think about, and talk about, what we are celebrating in these fifty days of Easter.  My young friend’s mistake is also our mistake. Try as we might to meet the crucified and risen Jesus on his own terms, we keep making him into something we can live with.  We keep turning the risen Lord into a figure who will bring us what we think we want.

Try as we might, each one of us will from time to time replace our crucified and risen Lord, the Lord who lives among us and knows us and forgives us, with an image that we think is a little more user-friendly: an image of a God who feeds us not with his own flesh and blood, but with the spiritual equivalent of Easter candy.  We are each looking, as Rowan Williams puts it, for a way to turn grace into something that meets our own needs as we define them.  But the great challenge of Easter is to see that what we really need is a God who will break open our hearts and our agendas and our schedules and our wallets and the front doors of our homes.  A God who will change what we crave instead of mindlessly feeding our cravings.  Jesus, who will painstakingly set us free to love the world instead of needing the world to conform to our standards.

You know how this works, right?  I will believe in God as long as God doesn’t make me look foolish.  (Good luck with that one.)  I will believe in God as long as God doesn’t make me associate with people I don’t like. (Ditto.) I will believe in God as long as God can fit into my busy schedule.  Religion is great as long as it keeps me feeling functional but when church breaks my heart or scares me or challenges me to think about how I spend my money, I may take a few weeks off until the feelings die down.  I might turn God off as though God were a pledge break on NPR. 

Prayer is great for many of us, as long as it leaves us feeling refreshed.  Have you noticed those studies that tell us that prayer lowers our blood pressure or improves our powers of concentration?  That cracks me up.  Where do we fit the crucified and risen Lord into that scenario?  Can you imagine the disciples at Gethsemane saying “Lord, we want to stay with you but we think we feel our blood pressure rising?”

Then again, that’s pretty much what the disciples did, isn’t it?  They fell asleep.  They denied the whole scary story.  They fled until the feelings could die down.  And they locked themselves in a room for fear. Like us, they were in way over their heads with the crucified and risen Lord. 

And that’s exactly where Jesus met them.  That’s exactly where they were when he breathed his Spirit on them and turned them into apostles. 

All of them, that is, except Thomas.  Thomas is a harder story.  What do you think of him?  Do you find him to be a brave champion of independent thinking, or a rash, headstrong skeptic?  Would it be possible to say that he is both?  That his greatest strength is also his greatest liability?

I guess on one level I know what Jesus is rebuking Thomas for in this morning’s Gospel.  Thomas, I guess, knows what he wants the risen Jesus to be.  He is willing to imagine believing if Jesus will simply submit to a physical inspection.  Thomas wants proof.  I imagine Thomas’s version of Easter candy is a Jesus who can rise from the dead without disturbing Thomas’s power to judge.

It makes sense; what we know about Thomas from John’s Gospel suggests that Thomas is a pretty tough guy.  Pretty bold.  Back when Jesus was going to go to Bethany because he had received word that Lazarus was ill, most of the disciples worried that going to Bethany was too dangerous, that Jesus would be killed if he traveled through Judea.  But Thomas’s commitment at that moment is absolute.  Alone among the disciples, Thomas proposes that they accept the danger of returning with Jesus: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”  That’s admirable, isn’t it? You wouldn’t expect someone with that kind of toughness to fall for the resurrection on mere hearsay. 

For all we know, Thomas may not have thought very highly of the other disciples at this stage.  Maybe he thinks he is brave and they are cowardly. Bravery is admirable, isn’t it?  Remember, the disciples have barricaded themselves in a house with the doors locked because they are afraid, even though Mary Magdalene has already seen Jesus and has already gone to them to tell them the news.  Have you ever wondered why Thomas isn’t there with the other eleven?  It’s odd, isn’t it, that he just happens not to have locked himself up behind closed doors for fear of his life?  What, he had better things to do?  Errands to run?  Maybe he just wasn’t fearful in the same way that the others were.  Maybe he was out looking for answers.  Maybe his courage in that moment put the other disciples to shame.

All we know is that, for all his admirable toughness, when the other disciples tell him the truth, that they’ve seen Jesus, he is unwilling to believe.  Because he thinks he knows what proof of the resurrection will look like.  He is apparently a certain kind of person, not gullible, not easily dissuaded from facing danger, not easily persuaded to rejoice.  Not comforted by illusions.  He’s not going to live his life in a happy state of fantasy about Jesus.  If the others, those cowards, want to tell themselves that they’ve seen the risen Lord, Thomas won’t reject them.  But Thomas is not going to fall for a shared illusion.  I imagine he would get a good chuckle out of my young friend’s Easter bunny picture.  Sure, let kids believe in magic.  Thomas is an adult.

And even that admirable adult maturity, it turns out, can get in his way.  Even the determination that we will meet the real crucified and risen Jesus, it turns out, can be an obstacle to meeting Jesus. 

There is no such thing as an encounter with Jesus that will leave us unchanged.  There is no such thing as an encounter with God’s overwhelming generosity and gentleness that will keep us from feeling like we’ve been taken apart and put back together differently.  There is no virtue we can bring to the foot of the cross that will allow us to escape from the need for God’s mercy.  Knowing Jesus means knowing our weakness and our foolishness.  If you reach out your hand to touch the risen Lord today in church you will give up something you were holding onto.  Whatever it was.  Just let it go.  Let Jesus reimagine what you are, what you need, what you have to give.

That’s the beauty of what Thomas went through.  Thomas the bold, Thomas the tough, Thomas who didn’t mind telling his friends that he wasn’t going to fall for their ridiculous fantasies, Thomas who is too smart for Jesus—that’s the Thomas who, alone among the disciples, can recognize Jesus as God.  Did you hear it?  Nobody else calls Jesus “My Lord and my God.”  Only Thomas.  Nobody else understands the power of the resurrection in quite the way that Thomas does.  It’s only by being embarrassed in front of his friends, by losing the stature he felt he had earned among them, by becoming a byword—“Doubting Thomas” we love to call him—it’s only through this awkward, inadvertent surrender that Thomas helps to reveal Jesus as God. 

Only the failure of Thomas’s agenda could teach him and us about the height and the breadth and the depth of God’s forgiveness and God’s grace.  I guess that’s why we love to trot out his story year after year, right after Easter. It’s Doubting Thomas week.  We are once again going to relive the story of his painful misunderstanding.

It’s embarrassing, isn’t it, this childish, Easter bunny sense of expectation that we bring to Jesus every Holy Week?  It’s mortifying and immature to face Jesus honestly and tell him that we would like to be God and we would like to control God’s agenda.  And every year, maybe every day, maybe several times a day, Jesus meets our childish need for control with outstretched arms.  And our need to control God may be eaten away, if we let it be, like last week’s chocolate bunny.   

Thanks be to God.  And thanks for Thomas.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

27 April 2014

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Starting

You may listen to Mother Takacs's sermon here.

There is a scene in the new movie Noah that apparently made Russell Crowe rather grumpy. It wasn’t so much the scene itself, but rather the filming of the scene. You don’t have to have seen the movie to know which scene I’m talking about, because it’s been in all of the trailers. It’s the shot where Crowe, in character as Noah, is standing alone in the rain just as it begins to fall. He looks up, and there is a beautiful, focused, slow-motion shot of a drop of rain falling on his forehead and running down his cheek. The problem with filming this scene was that the director, Darren Aronofsky, wanted Crowe to keep his eyes open as the water, being dumped from above in an industrial movie set somewhere in Brooklyn, first spilled onto his face. And Crowe couldn’t do it. He’s a fearless, tough-as-nails kind of actor, but he couldn’t stop himself from blinking. This apparently made him grumpy, which in turn made everyone grumpy, but there was nothing for it. Each time the presumably cold water began to splash down on his face, he couldn’t help it. It was impossible for him not to start.          

Now I think I get what Aranofsky was going for. This is Noah, after all, he’s been expecting this rain, he’s been counting on this rain in many ways. This water falling from the sky is a vindication of the crazy building project he and his family have been working on in their backyard for the better part of a year. In many ways, this water is his salvation. Yes! It proclaims – yes! I am a servant of the Lord. Yes, God has spoken to me. Yes, these plans will come to fruition in the way that God has promised. If anyone should have his eyes wide open when those rains begin to fall, it should be Noah.

But seriously, how do you keep your eyes open in the rain? How do you feel the water hit your face and not blink? Blinking is just what your body does, right? Even when you expect the water, you still start. A friend’s fingers, ready to flick water in your face at the pool – you start. One of those water squirting fans that feel so deliciously lovely on a hot day at the ballpark – squirt, and you start. A drop of early rain, a drip from the ceiling, a first spray at the hair salon – you start. It’s impossible not to.

Apparently it’s even impossible not to start during the Easter Vigil. I know, because I was watching you as I was spraying you – or aspersing you, to use the correct term – with Holy Water during our procession after the baptism. A tiny drop of water sent forth with a flick of my wrist from the tip of the aspergillum (now there’s a $10,000 church word for you), and you started. A whole bunch of you started. Even when you were looking right at me, ready to cross yourself, ready to be hit in the face with a little plop of holiness – you still started. It’s almost impossible not to.

And really, if there are any waters in the whole wide world that should cause you to start, it should be the waters of baptism. Because these are not just ordinary waters. These are the very waters of creation, the water that roiled and seethed before God corralled them under the earth and above the firmament. These are the waters the Holy Spirit moved over and blessed with Her breath to make them Her own. These are Noah’s waters, that raised the ark and all of its holy and hairy passengers into safety while razing the rest of Creation, the same waters that then reflected the light of the sun into a thousand tiny prisms that spread a rainbow of God’s promise across the sky. These are the waters of the great Exodus, swept aside by the prayers of God’s faithful servant Moses so that his people could pass through, and swept back over the servants of the faithless Pharaoh who could not stay true to his promise. These are the waters that the Israelites longed for in the wilderness, that ran out of dry rock, that gathered in deep wells where patriarchs and matriarchs met for matchmaking.

And these are the waters that flowed over Jesus’ own head in his baptism. These are the waters of new birth, the waters that promise a lifetime without thirst, the waters that flowed down Jesus’ face at the death of Lazarus. These waters are cosmic, eternal waters, transformed by our prayers on this cosmic, eternal night into the waters of baptism. They are sanctified by the Holy Spirit with fire and smoke, impregnated with the Holy Spirit to be for us waters that do something, that effect a real change, that become the physical sign of a miraculous internal grace. They are profound waters, heavy with meaning and potential, waters that transform us into one body, that connect the watery cells in my body to the watery cells in yours, that connect us now to Lily and to Don and to all of the saints who have come before us. They are no less than the very waters that bring both death and life. “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death,” Paul tells us, “so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” These are the waters that were showered out upon us a moment ago.  No wonder we could not help but start.  

We are in good company. The Gospel tonight is filled with people who start. When the peace-filled hush of dawn is ripped in two by the roar of an earthquake, the guards at Jesus’ tomb start so badly that they pass out. When the angel descends from the heavens on high like a flash of lightning, he tells the two Marys not to fear, probably because when they saw him they started. And when those women run down the Jerusalem road with their improbable news, there, suddenly, is Jesus – Hail! – startling them yet again. This is a resurrection story full of starts, starts of shock and of fear, starts of joy and of disbelief. For when faced with the glorious, improbable truth that Jesus is alive, it is, apparently, impossible not to start.

It is right, and a good and joyful thing for us to remember this – to recognize that the starts are a part of the story. Those moments of surprise, even shock, come along, part and parcel, with the resurrection. They are tied to it, bound up with it. And all of these starts remind us of how we ourselves should respond to this story, even though we are looking right at the moment of the resurrection, knowing that it is coming, even though we have stared this particular story right in the face again and again for years, even though we know this scene so well that we even have our favorite resurrection moments and Easter phrases – he is risen, as he said…behold, he is going before you to Galilee. But even though we can recite the resurrection story along with the Gospel reading, the story itself reminds us that there is still a good start to be had. Christ is risen; he is not here. You will see him. What was only death and darkness is now forever life and light. This are all impossible statements and yet true; they should make it impossible for us not to start.

And the most startling thing of all is that all of this – all of this – is done for you. These holy and deep waters that echo through time and connect us to all of creation, these waters that we use to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit are given freely to you. This night, when wickedness is put to flight and sin is washed away, is made for you. This Son, given to redeem us from our slavery and sin, is offered for you. How wonderful and beyond our knowing is God’s mercy and lovingkindness, and how startling is his gift – new light, a new dawn, new members of the body, new bread and new wine, new life, a new world. So start with wonder. Start with gratitude and joy. And let those starts remind you that God can still surprise you with grace, that God does and will continue to startle you with beauty and gift and love. Tonight and tomorrow and for the next great fifty days, when you hear these words – Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia! – remember the wondrous surprise of these words, like a brilliant flash of lightning or the promise of the first drop of rain that falls upon your forehead. And it will be impossible not to start.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Easter Vigil 2014

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Easter Selfie

Late last year the Oxford Dictionaries organization – our favorite and snootiest word police – identified, as they do every year, a Word of the Year.  This is a word that is supposed to be indicative of the direction of the world, to encapsulate the zeitgeist of a given year, to express something about the way we see the meaning of life, or at least talk about it.  And just a few months ago that word was: “selfie.”

A selfie, properly speaking, is not just a photographic self-portrait.  It must fit certain criteria.  It should be a photo in which the photographer is also the subject, taken most often with the camera on your cell phone.  The two most common formats are the arm’s-length-selfie (in which the arm holding the camera is often partly visible), and the mirror-selfie (which I think is self-explanatory).

Another defining characteristic of the selfie is that it has been posted to a social networking site – Facebook or Instagram, for instance – and this was probably the driving purpose of the photo in the first place.  A selfie is meant to be disseminated and shared over the Internet, not to be pressed quietly between the pages of a book.

There are strong feelings out there about the prevalence of the selfie.  Some see the trend as an exuberant embrace of our ability to share with one another in the age of fast and easy digital communication.  Others see it as a sign of the total decline of Western civilization.  One writer called the selfie a “subversive twist on the traditional understanding of the photograph.  Usually conducted because the subject cannot locate a suitable photographer to take the photo, like a friend.”

But this seems like an unfair criticism, since the selfie has clearly grown beyond the strict self-portrait to include others within the frame.  President Obama was controversially seen snapping a selfie with two other heads of state at the funeral of Nelson Mandela.  A much-seen selfie of Hilary and Chelsea Clinton has been making the rounds of the web.  And the group-selfie reached what you might call its apotheosis last summer when a gaggle of teenagers posted their selfie taken with Pope Francis, who has since be captured in more than a few selfies.

On Easter morning it might seem odd to stop to consider the selfie, except that I have been wondering about the possibility of the Easter-selfie, and how it would have transformed Christian faith had the selfie been an available means of expression and communication on that first Easter morning.

To begin with, it would have saved a lot of time.  We hear in John’s Gospel that there is a lot of running to and fro the tomb that morning.  First it’s Mary Magdalene in the dark.  She runs to get Peter and the unnamed disciple Jesus loved.  They run to the tomb together, but the unnamed disciple gets there first (maybe to get the first selfie?)  But Peter is the first to look into the tomb.  The two of them race back home.  But Mary stays by the tomb weeping, only to encounter two angels with whom she chats – a selfie moment if ever there was one.  Eventually Mary, still on her own encounters a man she supposes to be the gardener, but who turns out to be Jesus.  He tells her to go back to his brothers, his friends, his disciples and report to them.  Imagine what the impact would have been if she could have just held out her smart phone as she stood beside the risen Lord and taken a selfie with him.

All this running around, all this uncertainty would have been dealt with in a matter of seconds.  Not to mention that thousands of years of skeptics would have had photographic evidence to contend with.  Doubting Thomas himself would have been spared his doubt if he’d seen the selfies of Mary with the angels and then standing beside Jesus posted on Instagram with a nice sepia filter.

But, in fact, I think the Easter selfie has greater potential than just saving time, and even greater potential than dispelling doubt.  Imagine the selfies taken by Mary Magdalene, by Peter and the other disciple.  Imagine Mary standing right beside the risen Christ – but not so close as to touch him.  And now imagine yourself there too.  Maybe, like me, you have never actually taken a selfie and posted it on line (I don’t think I have).  And yet, if I was there on that Easter morning, I think I’d want to very much.

In a way the Easter selfie is an answer to the old Good Friday hymn: Were you there.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?  Were you there?

The implied answer to the hymn, of course, is no – you weren’t there and neither was I.  The hymn is a lament of longing.  We should have been there; we would have been there if we could; we wish we’d been there.  Would something had been different if you’d been there?  Who knows?  But you were not there; we were not there.

The Easter selfie would provide a powerful counterpoint to this lament.  On the day of resurrection it would allow us to proclaim with more than a little joy: I was there!  I spoke with angels!  I gazed into the empty tomb!  I saw the risen Lord Jesus and heard him call my name!  Don’t you believe me?  Have a look at this!

Were you there when they found the empty tomb? 

Were you there when the angels came to chat?

Were you there when the gardener called your name?

Yes, yes I was there!  And ohhhh! sometimes it causes me to tremble when I look at those Easter selfies!  Yes, I was there!

Additionally, the Easter selfie would allow us to get over our great reluctance to say anything at all about our faith.  Not sure how to tell someone that you actually believe in all this Jesus stuff?  Can’t find the words to describe the power of the risen Lord to change your life and the world?  No need to put it into words.  Just post a selfie taken outside his empty tomb – in this case take it outside of church on Easter morning - and this time leave it in color!

If “selfie” really is the word of the year; if it really does accurately capture the mood of this moment in history, the direction of the world; if it expresses something about the way we see the world, then let us at least have some Easter selfies to add to all the images that seem to say nothing more than that I am alone in the world and relatively pleased with myself – or at least that’s what I want you to believe.

Let’s add to those isolating images with the images that capture us looking hopeful by an empty tomb; that show us chatting away with friends who appear to be angels (what with that hazy filter you have added and the sun shining into the lens).  Let’s post a selfie taken with the nearest gardener.  And let us not be surprised on Easter, when we find ourselves in a garden where things are meant to come to life and grow, to hear a voice connected to that unknown gardener that’s calling out a name.

And let’s let our Easter selfie be one that captures the surprise and joy on our faces when we realize that the voice is calling your name, that the gardener is not the gardener at all, that the name he is calling is yours, and that the face in the picture that matters the most is not yours or mine, but the one we are somehow surprised to find there, even though he promised that after three days he would rise from the grave, and that he would be with us always.

Take an Easter selfie with Jesus, which is best done not with a camera phone but with your heart.  But still, don’t forget to share it, and let us all see you smiling beside the risen Jesus, who, by the way, is very happy to be here in an Easter selfie with you!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Easter Day 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia