Changed, all changed

Here we are, one week after our Easter celebrations of Christ’s resurrection.

We are still in the season of Easter, and our mood is one of joy, as we meditate on the appearances of the resurrected Christ to his disciples, and prepare to celebrate his ascension, and the gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

It took Jesus’s disciples 7 full weeks to process the meaning of Jesus’s passion, death and resurrection.

At first they cowered in fear behind locked doors, not sure what to make of it at all. That is the context of today’s 3^rd reading from John’s Gospel (20:19-31). But at Pentecost, 50 days later, they experienced the full power of the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire and a rushing, mighty wind. They went out into the streets to proclaim the good news of Christ to the crowds, and with increasing boldness they persisted in doing so, despite the authorities attempts to stop them. This is the context of todays 1^st reading from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 5:27-32).

Let us reflect on the two readings to better appreciate the change the Spirit worked in the disciples.

John tells us that Jesus appeared to the disciples on the evening of the day of his resurrection.

Jesus appears suddenly, through doors that the disciples had locked for fear of those who had demanded his crucifixion. Notice how Jesus is changed by his resurrection. His best friends do not immediately recognise him: Mary Magdalen at first mistook him for a gardener, and the disciples on the road to Emmaus only recognised him when he blessed and broke bread in his inimitable way. Now he shows he can come and go even through locked doors.

Jesus shows his wounds to the disciples, and reassures them, saying, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you’. Then he breathes on them, saying, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’. This, I feel sure, is Jesus planting the seed of the change that comes over the disciples. From now on the seed of the Spirit grows in them, deepening their faith and their confidence, until it bursts out into the light of day at Pentecost, so that they can proclaim the good news in public.

Thomas, however, is missing, and when the other disciples tell him of their experience, he refuses to believe them. ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands’, he says, ‘and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe’. Thomas is one of those sceptical people who does not believe anything unless he can test and prove it. I admire him for that. He does not fall for ‘fake news’ - we need people like him to keep us grounded in the truth.

A week later, Jesus appears again, and this time Thomas is there. Jesus speaks directly to him, saying, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe’. Thomas answers, ‘My Lord and my God!’, to which Jesus replies, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’.

We have not seen Jesus as Thomas did, but we are blessed to believe as Thomas did. Rather unfairly, he has been called ‘Doubting Thomas’, in our western church tradition. But I prefer the way the eastern church calls him ‘Believing Thomas’.

In the 1^st reading, the apostles have been arrested and brought before the Council of leaders.

This is the 3rd time that the temple authorities have arrested them. On the day of Pentecost they had gone out into the street boldly proclaiming the resurrection. The Church was born that day, and 3,000 people who welcomed their message were baptised. As time passed, ‘day by day the Lord added to their number’, we are told. But at first the authorities took no action.

Then one day, Peter and John met a cripple begging at the gate of the Temple, and healed him in the name of Jesus Christ. A crowd gathered, and Peter addressed them. The authorities could no longer ignore the apostles. They arrested them, and brought them before the Council for the 1^st time. Peter and John refused to back down, and Peter repeated his message. The Council realised they couldn’t move against them because they were so popular with the people, so they ordered Peter and John not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus, and released them.

But the apostles would not stop their teaching, and we are told that ‘yet more than ever believers were added to the Lord’. Finally, the High Priest ordered their arrest for a 2^nd time. They were thrown in prison. But when the Council assembled, they discovered that the prisoners had miraculously escaped from the prison, and were back in the Temple teaching again.

So, the apostles are arrested for a 3^rd time, and brought before the Council, as we heard in today’s reading. Peter and the apostles bravely confess their faith in Jesus. ‘We must obey God’, they say, ‘rather than any human authority’.

This enraged the Council, many of whom wanted to kill them. But thanks to the intervention of a respected Pharisee called Gamaliel, they were persuaded to have the apostles flogged and released, after ordering them - once again - not to speak in the name of Jesus. But, of course, the apostles continued to do so: ‘every day in the Temple and at home they did not cease to teach and proclaim Jesus as the Messiah’.

The change in the apostles between these two readings is truly striking, isn’t it?

In the reading from John’s Gospel they are terrified, hiding behind locked doors. In the reading from Acts they are fearless, confronting the Jewish authorities and disobeying their order not to speak in the name of Jesus. So what caused them to change? It is surely the work of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, working within them over many weeks, liberated them from the fear that caused them to cower behind locked doors. It emboldened them to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, despite the danger and opposition they encountered. And it enabled them to bring more and more people into the growing church.

Today, in our increasingly secular society, many harbour doubts. If we confess our faith in Jesus Christ, we may suffer mockery or unpopularity. But let us listen to Christ's voice say, ‘Peace be with you’. Let us trust that the Holy Spirit he breathes on us will grow within us. And let us prepare to go out with him to continue his loving Father’s work. Then our doubts and fears will fall away, and we can declare as the apostles did, ‘We must obey God, rather than any human authority’.

I shall finish in prayer, with a Collect of the Word:

Living God,
For whom no door is locked:
Draw us beyond our doubts,
Till we see your Christ
And touch his wounds where they bleed in others.
This we ask through Christ our Saviour,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen

 

Something Happened

Address given at Templederry & Nenagh, and from memory at Killodiernan, on Sunday 12th April 2015, the 2nd of Easter Year B.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Jesus Christ is that we've all heard of him!

That first Good Friday it must have seemed that the whole life and ministry of Jesus was a complete and abject failure. He started out so well, proclaiming the Kingdom of God, healing the sick, on the side of the marginalised and needy. But then it all seemed to fall apart. He got on the wrong side of the temple and the state; he was arrested; he was deserted by his disillusioned followers; and he was painfully and shamefully executed. Just another 1^st Century messianic pretender, destined to be forgotten like so many others – so it must have seemed!

If the story had ended there, none of us would ever have heard of him. But we have all heard of Jesus – that’s why we are here today. Something happened to continue the story. The writers of the NT describe this something as Resurrection. They all believe and give witness that Jesus rose from the dead. This belief emboldens them to continue his mission, now strengthened by the sense of God’s Holy Spirit working in and through them. The followers of Jesus multiply. Less then 3 centuries later they take over mighty Roman Empire. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The Resurrection is a mystery. No one is recorded as witnessing the event itself, just the empty tomb. Many disciples, we are told, met the risen Jesus, but there is something strange about the accounts – even his best friends find it hard to recognise him, and he comes suddenly, even through locked doors. These aren’t ordinary meetings. The gospel writers do not attempt to explain it – for them the fact of the resurrection is all that is important. I suggest the same should be true for us. We can’t go back in time to study it with our 21^st century science. But something happened – something happened which we might as well call what the NT writers called it: Jesus Christ rose from the dead!

Let us look more closely at today’s readings, and reflect on what they tell us about how the earliest disciples responded to Christ’s Resurrection.

In the gospel reading John (20:19-31) gives an account of the disciples meeting the risen Christ.

On the first day of the week, though the doors were locked, ‘Jesus came and stood among them.’ He shows them his wounds and the disciples rejoice. He tells them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then, ‘he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”’.

One thing that strikes me about this passage is how his disciples feel when they meet the risen Christ. Jesus would have used the Hebrew word Shalom, which has a rather wider meaning than the English word peace – it also signifies wholeness, wellbeing. When his disciples sense that Jesus stands among them, they feel his peace, they feel whole, they feel well: as we say today, they feel centred. This is what enables them to rejoice, no matter how difficult the situation is – it’s hard to imagine a situation more desperate than the one they faced after the crucifixion, isn’t it? Huddled together in a locked room in fear of their lives.

Another thing that strikes me is this: as he sends them out, the risen Christ gives his disciples the strength to continue his mission of self-sacrificing love and service - he breathes his Holy Spirit on them - just as the Father gave Jesus the strength to begin it. I believe Christ does so in every age.

The 1^st reading from Acts (4:32-35) tells us about the common life of the earliest Christians.

Time has moved on. Many new believers have joined the small frightened band of disciples who had met the risen Christ behind locked doors. The apostles testify ‘to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with great power’. All the believers, new and old, are ‘of one heart and soul’, and ‘great grace (is) upon them all’. The word translated here as ‘grace’ is the Greek word charis (χαρις) – ‘that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness’. It is ‘shalom’. It is how the disciples felt when they heard the risen Christ say ‘peace be with you’.

These earliest Christians were living as a community sharing everything. ‘No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common’, we are told, and ‘there was not a needy person among them’.

Some suggest this is a scriptural endorsement of Communism, but that would be a mistake, an anachronism, I think.  Communism as a political philosophy is a 19^th Century idea, a response to the injustices of industrial capitalism. The circumstances of the tiny group of disciples trying to live a life of Christian witness within the Roman Empire were quite different.

But what we should notice, I think, is that the disciples of Jesus cared intensely for each other. They were generous; they never forgot that when some do not have enough, everyone must help; they wanted to share what they had, because they loved one another, as Jesus commanded them to do.

So to sum up, as 21^st century Christians here are three things we can learn from the response of the earliest Christians to the fact of Resurrection

1^st, the risen Christ blesses us with his ‘shalom’, the gift of his peace – just as he did the first disciples.

2^nd, the risen Christ breathes his Holy Spirit into us to give us strength to continue his mission of loving service in the world – just as he did the first disciples.

And 3^rd, in response to Christ’s peace and the Holy Spirit we should care intensely for one another - love one another. Let us share what God has given us so that no one is in need – just as the first disciples did.

The Gift of Faith on the 2nd Sunday of Easter

An address given at St Mary's, Nenagh on the 2nd Sunday of Easter, 27th April 2014, year A

There is a common theme running through all 3 of today’s readings.

That theme is belief; belief that God raised Jesus from the dead; belief that his resurrection reveals Jesus to be the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one.

This belief is a hard call, isn’t it? In our common human experience, people who are dead - really dead, not just in a coma - stay dead. They don’t come back to life, walk about and talk to us. But that is what the Gospels tell us Jesus did. It seems impossible. Yet this belief is the very heart and centre of the faith that brings us all together here today.

Can we really believe it? Let’s look a little more closely at the readings to explore the question.

First we turn to the reading from John’s Gospel (John 20:19-31) about the apostle Thomas.

Thomas is nobody’s fool, he doesn’t take anything on somebody else’s say so, he thinks for himself. I like that! He is one of my heroes.

Thomas isn’t there when Jesus appears to the other disciples on the day of his resurrection, so when they tell him their extraordinary news “We have seen the Lord!” he doesn’t believe them. He says “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.”  But a week later Thomas is there when Jesus appears again. Jesus talks directly to him, and invites him to touch his wounds. Thomas responds immediately, saying “My Lord and my God!”  For all his initial scepticism, Thomas is convinced by his own senses that Jesus has risen from the dead.

Yet there is something odd about John’s story - as there is about all the stories of Jesus after the resurrection. The risen Jesus is not the same as he was before. Neither Mary Magdalen nor the disciples on the road to Emmaus recognise him at first. And in today’s reading Jesus seems to appear out of nowhere, even though the doors are locked. It is clear to me that we can’t imagine the risen Jesus as just the re-animated corpse of the man Jesus who died on the cross. There’s more to it than that!

So what are we to make of it all? If there is any truth in the Gospel accounts, the disciples experienced something mysterious but quite extraordinary. They described it as meeting Jesus the risen Christ: “We have seen the Lord” they say. It would be futile to try to explain what they experienced scientifically – there just isn’t enough evidence. But that doesn’t mean that whatever it was contradicts what we have learned through science about the way God’s creation works.

The first point I hope you will take away today is this:

We can believe both in the truth of science and in the disciples’ experience. We can believe both and accept the mystery. And we can choose to call their experience what they called it – meeting Jesus the risen Christ.

Now let’s turn to the reading from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:14a, 22-32).

The scene is set at 9 am on the day of Pentecost; 6 weeks after Thomas declared his belief, and 7 weeks after the resurrection. The twelve have just received the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, and begun to speak in all manner of foreign tongues, attracting a crowd. Peter, acting as spokesman, starts to make a speech.

For the first time in public, Peter boldly declares his belief, and that of the other disciples, that God has raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses” he says. And he quotes Psalm 16 to show his Jewish listeners that King David had prophesied the resurrection of the Messiah:

"He was not abandoned to Hades,
nor did his flesh experience corruption."

These days we can’t argue convincingly from biblical prophecy, because it doesn’t fit in with how our scientific culture understands the way the universe works. But people did then, and his words were very persuasive - we are told he persuaded 3000 new disciples to be baptised that day!

What really impresses me is the change that has come over Peter - he has become a different man. This is the man that only seven weeks ago denied that he knew Jesus three times and ran away, because he was afraid of what might happen to him. Yet now this ordinary fisherman is inspired to stand up in public and preach to a crowd, testifying to his belief that God raised Jesus from the dead. Peter is completely changed. He kick-starts the process that has led to countless people sharing his belief.

And Peter isn’t the only one changed. As we read on in the book of Acts, we see how the disciples pass on their belief to others; how they start to organise themselves into a Church; how they seem to be propelled by some irresistible force to go out and make disciples of all nations, just as Jesus asked them to do.

The 2^nd point I want you to take away is this:

The experience of meeting the risen Christ, and receiving the Spirit he promised, utterly transforms his disciples. What a powerful force for change it is!

Finally we turn to the 1st Letter of Peter (1Peter 1:3-9)

The author gives us a glimpse of how Peter and Thomas and the other apostles passed on their belief to new generations. “Although you have not seen (Jesus), you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him”. Notice how this echoes what Jesus said to Thomas: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Those who heard the Apostles testify to their belief accepted it on faith, AS their faith. And that faith has been passed on from generation to generation, until we ourselves received it. And we in turn will pass it on to our own children and grandchildren, by the grace of God.

The 3^rd point to take away is tis

We should see our faith in Jesus the risen Christ, and our capacity to believe it, as like a magnificent gift from God - a gift which will utterly transform us if we let it, just as it did the first disciples. I think it is what allows us to be truly human. We are blessed by it.

Let us thank God for the gift of faith, handed down to us from Thomas and Peter and the first disciples!