The Second Sunday of Easter (Yr A) Apr 23, 2017

 

New Testament: 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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The Response: Psalm 16

 

1   Protect me, O God, for I take refuge in you; *

    I have said to the Lord, “You are my Lord,

    my good above all other.”

2  All my delight is upon the godly that are in the land, *

    upon those who are noble among the people.

3   But those who run after other gods *

     shall have their troubles multiplied.

4   Their libations of blood I will not offer, *

     nor take the names of their gods upon my lips.

5   O Lord, you are my portion and my cup; *

     it is you who uphold my lot.

6   My boundaries enclose a pleasant land; *

     indeed, I have a goodly heritage.

7   I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel; *

     my heart teaches me, night after night.

8   I have set the Lord always before me; *

     because he is at my right hand I shall not fall.

9  My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices; *

    my body also shall rest in hope.

10  For you will not abandon me to the grave, *

      nor let your holy one see the Pit.

11 You will show me the path of life; *

     in your presence there is fullness of joy,

    and in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.

 

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The Epistle: 1 Peter (1:3-9)

 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

 

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The Gospel: 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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TODAY’S HOMILY

by the Rev. Michael Kreutzer

 

Each Sunday during the Easter season, the Lectionary presents us with readings from the Acts of the Apostles.  Their intent is to describe the effects that Jesus’ resurrection had on the lives of his first followers and, through them, on the rest of the world.

 

Today’s passage is part of Peter’s Pentecost sermon: the one that he is described as giving in Jerusalem immediately after the Holy Spirit had come upon the first believers.  That coming of the Spirit is the fulfillment of God’s work in raising Jesus from the dead.  For many years, it has been proclaimed and celebrated in churches as “the birthday of the church” or “the day that the church was founded.”

 

But there is a problem with that.  The Acts of the Apostles is the only place in the New Testament that describes that so-called “Pentecost event”; and, as Methodist bishop and New Testament scholar William Willimon points out (Acts, p. 36), “Nowhere does [the Acts of the Apostles] speak of the ‘founding’ of the church or of the formation of some ‘new Israel.’  There is only one Israel – the faithful people who respond faithfully to the promises of God.”  In the pages of Acts, the disciples “preach the word by which Israel’s mission to all the nations is at last brought to fulfillment.”  There is no “us” and “them”; Jews and Christians alike are part of the same, ongoing, life-giving story.

 

Unfortunately, over the past two millennia, the notion that the church has somehow superseded, or taken the place of, Israel has produced some tragic results.  Bigotry against and persecution of Jews has been a disgraceful part of Christians’ religious heritage.  Instead of seeing ourselves as blessed by God through our sharing with Jews in the rich heritage of Israel, we have built mental walls – and sometimes legal walls and physical walls as well — between us and them.

 

Human beings have always, it seems, built walls: whether those walls are built of stone or of wood or just of our prejudicial attitudes toward those who differ from us.  Sometimes walls are necessary; they are there to protect people from danger.  But far too often, walls are not only unnecessary, but also divisive and harmful.  They are built most often on the foundation of fear and are cemented in place by ignorance: by our lack of knowledge and understanding about those whom we try to keep out.

 

There is a poem about walls, written by Robert Frost.  It is titled “The Mending Wall.”  I think that I used it in a sermon several years ago.  It portrays a neighbor who insists on building and rebuilding a wall between them, protesting that “Good fences make good neighbours.”  But there always seems to be an invisible “something” at work trying to break through it.  And, reflecting on that continued tearing down by that unseen hand, the poet challenges that old saying by observing:

 

If I could put a notion in his head:

“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.”

 

Today’s gospel reading has to do with walls and with what God seeks to do with walls that divide people from one another.  Its story continues the one that we heard last Sunday on Easter morning; but this one takes place later that day, in the evening.  Jesus’ disciples were hiding behind walls with the doors locked.  Why? — out of fear: fear of those whom John refers to simply as “the Jews.”  But the risen Jesus rendered those walls totally ineffective.  He, at least virtually, tore them down.  He walked right through them with his message of peace.  He brought his followers the peace of God that was working to tear down many walls: the wall between death and resurrection; the wall between Jesus’ followers and the world to which he was sending them; the walls that we build to keep other people out.

 

What walls have we built?  What walls do we continue to build?  Over the centuries, people have constructed at least virtual walls between themselves and other people: people who are of a different race, people who are of a different nationality, people who are from a different culture, people who are of a different sexual orientation, people who are from a different neighborhood, people who are of a different religion, people who are, or at least seem to be, different from us in a whole variety of ways.

 

And why do we build them; why do we try to keep other people out? — for the same reason the disciples did in our gospel reading: out of fear, fear of those who seem to be different from us, fear of the unknown, maybe fear of our own inadequacies in relating to those on the other side of the wall.

 

Yet the risen Jesus can still pass through those walls of ours, rendering the doors that we lock irrelevant and powerless.  He can still pass through them, if we allow him to do so, greeting us also with the gift of his peace.  It is a peace that comes when we are willing to join with God in tearing down those walls that divide us from others, so that we might recognize our common humanity and the one God of us all.

 

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.”  Today’s gospel reading offers us a slight, but critically important, variation on Robert Frost’s words.  Instead of “Something,” it insists that it is “Someone”: that same someone who, on the first Easter evening, stood before his amazed followers and declared “Peace be with you.”  It is that same someone who is at work in our lives and in the life of the world today, passing through and tearing down the walls that divide God’s children from one another.

 

Someone there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.  And that same someone calls us to join him on the greatest and most joyful demolition project that the world has ever known.

 

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