Breathing in the Spirit (4/30/17)
Caravaggio, The Incredulity of St. Thomas
Two weeks ago, I told you to get out! I told you to get outside of these walls and listen and share Christ’s love with everyone you meet. I also told you to get out there and witness to the resurrected Christ. It occurs to me that that particular instruction, to witness to the resurrected Christ, might be pretty difficult. What does that even mean?
Acts 2:14a, 36-41,15:20-21; John 20:19-31
Sermon
Good morning. Two weeks ago, I told you to get out! I told
you to get outside of these walls and listen and share Christ’s love with
everyone you meet. I also told you to get out there and witness to the resurrected
Christ. It occurs to me that that particular instruction, to witness to the
resurrected Christ, might be pretty difficult. What does that even mean? How do
we explain the resurrection in the midst of contemporary science and
technology? And what do we mean when we say the resurrection is a real and
present event in our lives? I want to explore those questions over the next
several weeks. Before I get into today’s Gospel text, I want to tell you a
story that highlights the difficulties of sharing the message of the risen
Christ in today’s world.
Last summer I participated in vacation bible school at
FUPC, Houston. I had never volunteered to do VBS before, not at any church
where I’d been a member. But as the pastor, even as an interim pastor, when I
was asked to participate in VBS, I couldn’t say no—even though I knew it could
be uncomfortable. I’m always afraid that someone will give me a question I
can’t answer. At least with grownups, I know how to dodge a difficult question.
I can always say, “I hadn’t thought about that before; let me do some
research.” But it’s different with kids. You can’t leave them hanging and they
know when you’re making stuff up.
So there I was, talking to kids in grades three and four, I
think. I was telling them the story of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. One of
the girls in the class asked me, “Why didn’t Jesus get a gun and shoot his
enemies?” What an astonishing question!
On one level, maybe it was a little bit funny that she
didn’t know guns weren’t invented for another fifteen hundred years or so. And
honestly, that was my first response, but it’s not really the right answer. The
correct answer is that Jesus voluntarily gave himself up to those who
persecuted him. This young girl was not a member of the congregation. I assume
that she had a friend in the congregation, who brought her to VBS. And I’m glad
that she was there. It seemed like she wasn’t familiar with the Easter story or
with Jesus. Yet she was quite familiar with our culture: so many of our stories
show heroes that use violence to defeat their enemies. I can only imagine how
strange Jesus’ message of self-sacrifice must sound to someone who was raised
outside the church, in a culture that glorifies violence.
The world outside of the church is filled with people who
have never really heard the Gospel story, and even more folks who have heard
it, but who have turned away from organized worship. Some people believe that
they can do it on their own—whatever that means. Others work more than one job
or have kids who are really active in youth sports. I met a woman who stopped
going to church in the years after she graduated from high school. She was
raised in a Presbyterian church and she said that when she went to worship, all
she met were a bunch of hypocrites who didn’t seem to live by the Gospel, so
she didn’t want to be around those folks. She left the church forty or fifty
years ago. I have another friend who was raised Catholic but who now identifies
as an atheist. Of the time he spent in church, he remembers a lot of rules, but
not a lot of love.
Yet we are charged to be the salt of the Earth and the
light of the world; we’re charged to spread the Gospel and share the love of
God in and through Jesus Christ—to everyone; to those who are here in church
every Sunday, to those who used to be here, and to those who have never heard
the story. Today’s lesson from the Gospel of John offers some insight as to how
we might do that.
This story is often referred to as the story of “doubting
Thomas.” This is a poor name. It distorts the story into a conflict between
faith and doubt, and in the process, it reduces faith to an intellectual
activity. In the Gospel of John, faith is not an intellectual activity, it is a
category of relationship. To believe in Jesus is to be in a relationship with
Jesus. So let’s not give Thomas a bad rap by saying that he doesn’t have enough
faith.
This morning’s Gospel lesson contains not one, but two
stories. First, the risen Christ appears to all of the disciples, except Thomas. The story begins: “When
it was evening on that day,” the Gospel Writer doesn’t want us to miss that
detail. It’s important. He tells us up front; it’s night, it’s dark outside.
This is always a big deal in the Gospel of John.
The disciples are in
darkness, having yet to believe or understand the events of the last three
days. Jesus’ appearance is not only his physical presence but yet another
instance of the light shining in the darkness.[1]
The darkness is sin.
Remember, in the Gospel of John, sin is not a collection of bad deeds. For
John, sin is a category of relationship. Those who are in the dark are not
fully in relationship with Christ; they do not know the light of Christ’s love.
When the risen Jesus visits the disciples, they’re afraid.
They thought that they were cut off from Jesus, that their relationship had
ended with the crucifixion. They were afraid that the religious authorities
might come after them. Fear and isolation formed the darkness for the
disciples. Fear interrupts faith.
So, Jesus greets them by saying, “Peace be with you.”
Peace.
The peace of Christ be with you. Peace!
Jesus speaks to the disciples’ fears. This is immediate,
yet it also recalls an earlier episode in this Gospel, in which Jesus gives
final instructions to the disciples before his arrest. Jesus tells the
disciples: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as
the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be
afraid” (John 14:27). How does Jesus actually give his peace to the disciples? Through
the Holy Spirit! According to this morning’s lesson:
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.” (John 20:21-22)
The disciples were
relieved to see the wounded body of the resurrected Christ, but they received
lasting peace through the Holy Spirit; the Spirit “is present to give comfort during the most intense
periods of distress in the lives of the disciples.”[2]
Maybe some of you are wondering: Why do we have a second
story? Why does the risen Christ have to have a separate appearance to Thomas?
This could just be an accident of history; maybe Thomas just wasn’t there. But
I think it’s more likely that the Gospel Writer is trying to make a larger
point.
This whole story—the first appearance of Jesus to the
disciples, without Thomas, and then
the second appearance of Jesus to all of the disciples, including Thomas—shows that it is essential to have one’s own
experience of the risen Christ.[3] Thomas needs to have the
same experience that the other disciples had. Thomas needs to know that he is
still in relationship with the incarnated God, the Word made flesh: “Thomas
gets to say what we all want to say, the truth of what we do not want to admit,
how difficult it is to believe in Jesus whom we have never encountered for
ourselves.”[4]
Thomas is where we enter this story.
Beloved, we all need to have this experience of a
relationship with Christ. None of us were alive when the human Jesus walked the
Earth. We can only experience this relationship with the risen Christ through
the power of the Holy Spirit. Sadly, we’re not very good at talking about the
Spirit in the Presbyterian Church. I could give you a seminary explanation, but
I think I can do this better by telling you a story.
A couple weeks ago I went to a party in Pittsburgh. The
guest of honor was a former pastor of mine, the Rev. Dr. Mary Louise
McCullough. I first met Mary Louise about ten years ago, when I began
attending, and later joined, Sixth Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh. In fact, Mary
Louise is truly the last person who I thought of as my pastor. She left Sixth about five years ago to become the senior
pastor of a big church in Nashville.
Some amazing things happened in the life of that
congregation while Mary Louise was the pastor. Four people in that congregation
either began or finished seminary. The congregation began a mission partnership
with a coffee farm in Nicaragua. And some wonderful relationships were built
among members of the congregation—many of which were made stronger on those
trips to Nicaragua.
Of course, I had no idea any of that would happen when I
walked in the door of the church in 2007. I came at the recommendation of a
former pastor. I heard a great sermon, so I decided to come back the next
Sunday. And the Sunday after that, and the Sunday after that. Mary Louise is a
gifted preacher. I began to hear the scriptures with a clarity that I’d never
heard before.
As I got to know Mary Louise better, I’d ask her questions
about her sermons. I’d send her emails. And she gave me great responses.
Perhaps she saw seminary in my future before I did. She certainly gave me lots
of encouragement when I began to explore my sense of call. Many others in the
congregation did, too. I wasn’t the only one in the congregation who heard her
sermons so clearly. There were some Sundays where it just felt like everyone in
the congregation was truly getting it. But Mary Louise isn’t the hero of this
story.
This is a story about encountering the Holy Spirit. Those Sundays—when
I heard the sermons with such clarity and it seemed like others heard the same
thing—that was the Holy Spirit moving among us. It wasn’t a blinding flash or
light or a Road-to-Damascus experience. It was the still, small voice, growing
clearer and louder. And it probably didn’t happen for everyone in the
congregation, but it sure felt like it, because I was finally in a place to
feel and understand the presence of the Spirit in ways that I never had before.
I felt a combination of intellectual and emotional engagement
that I had never felt before. I felt it during worship. I felt it in choir
practice. I certainly felt it on that coffee farm in Nicaragua, and I felt it
when I described my experiences to others. I know that other people felt this
way, too.
The Gospel of John is all about relationships,
particularly, what it means to be in a relationship with the human Jesus. The
disciples understand Jesus through human encounters: Mary Magdalene realizes
she’s in the presence of the risen Christ when he calls her by name; the
disciples realize they’re in the presence of the risen Christ when they see his
wounds. They have direct experience of the relationship.
That party for Mary Louise was amazing. There were so many
people there who had experienced those kinds of relationships. We knew each
other more deeply and intensely. What we had at Sixth lasted for a couple
years—at least for those of us at the party. That gathering allowed us to have
a taste of what we’d had before; it was a tangible reminder of the presence of
the Spirit.
Beloved, when we meet people outside of these walls—people
who have left the church or people who were never in the church—we cannot offer
them a bunch of reasons why they should worship with us. There’s no logical
argument that will persuade anyone to sit in these pews if they aren’t here
already. It is only through relationships that we can reach others with the
love of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.
So that means we have to cultivate those things within this
church that allow us to feel the movement of the Holy Spirit. I think we might
start by learning some new hymns. I would also invite everyone to join the
adult Sunday school class. I think we have fun there, but don’t take my word
for it, ask one of the members. We need to prepare the way for the Lord, so
that we can better feel the movement of the Spirit, and then we have to
communicate our experience of Christ’s love with the world outside of our walls.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Benediction
Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that
we are called to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world, the world
today. Go forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and reconciliation. Do
not return evil for evil to any person, but know that we are all loved by God,
and that we are called to reflect that love to everyone we meet. Go forth and
be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. In the name of Jesus
Christ, our Lord, Let all God’s children say, Amen!
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