April 26, 2009
The 3rd Sunday of Easter
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

There is something so definitive about Easter. Suddenly everything is different. Jesus, previously seen as a remarkable teacher, but a man nonetheless, becomes known as God incarnate. His friend Peter now called him “the Author of life” in the first reading from Acts today. Resurrected, the Christ now soars above the limitations of earth and humanity as the world’s redeemer. 

But this definitiveness is not limited in Easter to Jesus. Peter goes on to claim that in him, our sins are wiped out. Gone forever. In faith, we have risen with Christ and we are born anew. As John wrote in the second lesson, “No one who abides in him sins” anymore. Jesus himself said “whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Doesn’t it feel wonderful to be made so definitively new? 

Well, yes, until the next time we walk in darkness. Until we run smack into our human limitations again. Until we feel quite unresurrected, stuck in the old self. As they say about the Ganges River - where it is believed that one’s sins are washed away - the birds of sin are perched in the trees all along the banks, just waiting for pilgrims to emerge from the waters. 

And so there is a conflict here. On the one hand, we’re told that with Christ, we are resurrected into a new being, released from the power of darkness. On the other hand, we are told that we shall always be a sinner. And we know how in so many ways we’re the same old person we’ve always been. 

Some resolve this conflict by thinking of their new life entirely in terms of heaven. Whatever sins or unhappiness they experience from now on in this world don’t really matter. After this long valley of tears they will go to heaven, where at long last all the promises of Easter will be realized: purity, peace, and unending joy. But it’s not very satisfying to have our gratification be that delayed, is it? 

Others really go out on a limb and declare themselves incapable of sin in this lifetime. They’ve been saved, God is with them, and no matter how bad their actions may seem to others, it’s all part of God’s mysterious ways. Everything becomes justified. Jim Jones should remind us how dangerous this is. 

But for most of us, questions remain. With faith in Christ, does a permanent change really happen to us? Or are we just like everyone else, stumbling our way through endless cycles of goodness and badness, trying to gradually improve ourselves as we go? In this lifetime, is there some hope of getting to the point where we experience complete freedom and unconditional love for everyone? Must we wait until we die? What about these Easter promises, anyway? 

One of my sons is an actor. I don’t just say about him “he acts in plays.” I say “he is an actor.” He not only was trained in the craft of speaking and moving on stage. Something happened to him in the process of his training that changed who he is. At some point he became an actor. He will always be an actor. We say “it’s in his blood.” And it is. 

We’ve got two people in our congregation who were recently ordained. They are now finding out what the rest of us discovered along the way. At some point when we weren’t looking – perhaps before we were even ordained, or in the ordination rite, or later when people began treating us differently – we changed. We became a deacon, a priest. We’re not just carrying out the duties of an ordained person. It’s who we are. 

So it is with our Christian vocation. At some point, during our training, hopefully something happens to us inside. A change occurs so that we become oriented towards God in Christ. This may happen when we’re children. It may happen for our 6 youth who are going through a rite of passage today in the Celebration of Manhood and Womanhood. It may happen to some when they accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, when they join Alcoholics Anonymous, when they go through a serious crisis, when they finally learn how to pray from the heart. It may happen at more than one point in life. 

But if we are children of God, it is because we have allowed something to change in our heart. We have turned towards something beyond ourselves and said “yes.” We were humbled and were then willing to look at ourselves honestly, to rely upon that mysterious power of goodness we call “grace,” to consider what the wisdom traditions have to teach us, and to do what we can to follow in the steps of truth and love. This is our “training,” and in the process, we become children of God. 

Without this change, people do walk in darkness. Without any power of goodness beyond oneself, without humility, without a connection to wisdom traditions, without an intention to dedicate oneself to love and truth, without an opening of the heart, people live in sin. They are often obsessed with material things, getting ahead, finding security, self-justification and control. Life closes in on itself, and becomes smaller and darker as they get older. 

But if we have had some kind of inner conversion, if we have reoriented ourselves Godward, our hearts are broken open and light is able to get in. The door is off the hinges. We will always be porous. We can’t go back. Possibilities beyond our own feeble powers can always come into play. We’re not in control, because we don’t have to be. Something else - something far better and wiser and more loving than we are – is at work. We are a part of something eternal, something that is always within us, around us, moving us and all of creation towards its fulfillment. 

We may continue to sin, but with a heart that is oriented towards God, with faith, we are not enslaved by sin. We are free not because we will never be frustrated and stuck again, but because the door is permanently removed. I think this is what John meant when he said that “No one who abides [in God] sins,” or when Jesus said that we “will never walk in darkness but have the light of life.”  

Going back to my son and those who are ordained, even though they have been changed internally so that they become an actor, a priest or deacon, they are not finished becoming. They will learn and become better at what they do. 
 
All our lives, we will continue to live into our Christian vocation, our identity as children of God. We will always have to apply ourselves to the ongoing journey of faith, to try to understand ourselves, to repent, to embrace the promise. The 6 young men and women who dedicate themselves to this pathway today will discover that it is a long, winding one. 

But we make this journey with an inner security. We don’t walk as one lost, alone, blind, in the wilderness. Like our 65 pilgrims to Chimayo on Good Friday, we walk in the company of countless other porous people who have also reoriented their hearts Godward. We walk with the scriptures and our faith traditions. We walk knowing that we belong to the family of God, and that the Spirit is always guiding us all homeward. 

Yes, we are sinners, we will always be limited by our particular history and issues. There is a part of us that will always be resistant to God, to love, to freedom. That’s our lot in life. 

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is all you are. If your heart has broken open to God, if at some point you have become porous, there is the divine light in you. That light shines in the darkness and it will never be overcome. Whenever we sincerely give ourselves to God, God takes our offering seriously. The door is taken off the hinges, and there is no going back. We are resurrected with Christ. We live in the kingdom of God, and we always will. 

So may Christ’s peace be with you. Do not doubt; do not fear, only believe. 
Peace be with you. 

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church 
Albuquerque, New Mexico 
Sunday April 19, 2009  2nd Sunday of Easter 
Text: John 20: 19-31 
Preacher: Christopher McLaren 

It is Easter evening, and the disciples are hiding in fear. They are afraid of those who killed their beloved teacher and what they might do to his followers. They are afraid of the future for it is so changed after the horrors of the past days. They are afraid of each other, for no one is sure what these strange reports from Mary and John and Peter mean. They are afraid to hope. And they are, I believe, afraid of themselves, each agonizing over their abandonment of a beloved friend in his hour of trial.  

Into this fear and uncertainty, comes the Risen One.  It is beyond wonderful that the first words of the Risen One are, “Peace be with you.” These are the words the disciples most need to hear. They are a balm for wounded hearts, guilty consciences, addled minds.  

We are not told how the disciples respond. Perhaps they are stunned into silence, shaking in their sandals and wondering if they are indeed suffering some sort of group hallucination. Strangely Jesus wants them to look at his hands and his side. He offers his wounds as proof of his presence. What an odd way to identify himself. He could have told them a story that only he would know, or cracked an inside joke, or simply said listen to my voice.  But he shows them the wounds in his hands and side.  

Hands are interesting parts of us. We don’t always notice them right away but to the careful observer they can divulge quite a lot about us.  Our hands carry our history of work and play, of accidents and activities, of relationships and stresses.  Hands can be telling.  If you look at the hands in my family one can see the traces of several trips to the emergency room: glass broken while washing dishes, fingers slammed in doors. You can see the telltale signs of spring garden work, of nervous habits, and of fingers that touch the violin. 

There are hands that all of us remember.  I can recall my grandmother Etta’s hands strong, thin, able and worn from so many years in the poultry and sewing factories. I remember the huge, calloused, powerful hands of my first framing boss who could wield a 28oz hammer with amazing skill. I can remember the fantastic dark African hands of a fellow seminarian warm, beautiful, and full of healing.  I think of those wonderful small hands that hold on tight to mine as we cross the parking lot to school.

In fact, I can probably identify some of you by your hands. I have had the deep privilege of placing blessed bread in them over the past three years.  I know some of your hands by heart and am comforted when I see them reaching out once again receive the body of Christ broken for us. 

And that is what the disciples saw, the wounded body of Christ.  When the disciples saw Jesus’ hands they were put in mind of all that those hands had done.  They remembered how his hands had summoned them away from their nets.  How his hands had touched the untouchables.  How he talked with his hands as he told parables on the shore of the lake, gesticulating wildly his face alive with laughter.  How his touch had awakened so many back into life: the woman with the hemorrhage, the man whose friends tore off the roof, the blind man whose eyes Jesus healed with holy mud-pies.  These were hands that told many stories, hands that took bread and blessed it and broke it to abundance, hands that had turned over the tables in the temple and drove out the profit seekers with a whip.  Hands that had loved them, loved them to the end, washing their feet at a dinner not so long-ago.  

His hands were wounded now. They had been used awfully with holes in them and bruises that made them painful to look at.  They were doubly painful for the disciples as they reminded the that when the calumny came to Jesus, when he was being nailed to that Roman crosspiece, they had run, run far away so that they did not have to witness the agony, so they did not hear the pounding, so they did not see the blood. And now those very hands were in their midst. 

In many cultures and in a great deal of literature the appearance of a ghost is often associated with revenge, so it is no surprise that the disciples might have been more than a little terrified when they first encountered the Risen One in their midst.  Gradually they began to calm down. His words were peaceful. The offering of his wounded hands and side confirmed that he was no ghost, but their beloved friend.  He was not there to punish them, to scold them, or to point out their failings.  No, Jesus had come speaking peace to them and more than that.  

“When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” 

Their relationship with Jesus was not over, it continued.  After seeing the hands of Jesus and being reminded of all that those hands have done in the name of the Kingdom, those fearful disciples are commissioned for action.  And what is more they are given the gift of the Spirit which almost gives me the chills and not just because I grew up Pentecostal.

This is the disciples first Pentecost, the breath of the Risen One flowing into them.  This is the Spirit that brooded over creation at the beginning of time. This is the breath of life that in the garden brought the first citizens of earth to life. This is the breath that Ezekiel prophesied to.  This is the Spirit of the living God falling fresh on disciples huddled away in fear. 

There is no revenge, there is no rebuke. They have been spared any retribution. Though they have spoken no words of confession, and are sure of their guilt, they are so clearly forgiven by the Risen One.  They receive a remarkable gift, the gift of the Spirit.  And this gift is confirmation that what they most need to hear is that they are forgiven, that they are loved and accepted and still part of the wild mission of God on this earth.  Not only are they forgiven, Jesus tells them that forgiveness will be their stock and trade. The world will know them by their acts of forgiveness.  They do not need to touch Jesus as later Thomas will insist upon.  No, rather they have been touched by him and are sent out into the world to continue the work that he had begun. 

While the gospel accounts are at pains to impress upon us that the Resurrected Christ did in fact have a body with the disciples touching his hands and feet, feeling his side, handing him a piece of broiled fish, and having breakfast on the beach, that does not seem to be the real point of the story.  The point of the story seems to be how Jesus touched them.  How in their encounters with the Risen One their hearts and minds were opened up to a new way of being, one that was not full of guilt or punishment or retribution for having fled or failed or betrayed their beloved friend and teacher. 

The point of the story is the incredible experience of abundant forgiveness – of a divine amnesty – of which they were the dumbfounded recipients.  This is how Jesus touched the fearful disciples back into life.  This was their first Pentecost, the Easter gospel they were sent out to give witness to. This is the gospel we inherit from our ancestors in the faith.  The proof of our faith in the Risen One is not in our touching his hands or peering into the spear wound in his side anymore than it was for those first disciples.  The proof of our faith is in feeling the touch of Jesus in our lives when we know in the deepest parts of our being the truth of God’s abundant mercy, of forgiveness without measure.  

This is the good news of that Easter evening.  Truth be told it is not a whole lot easier for us to accept this kind of holy amnesty than it was for them.  We are all offered this amazing gift but find ways to doubt it, to stand back unconvinced, to assure ourselves that it is too good to be true. But the Risen One is persistent.  Christ reaches out to us again and again, touching us back into life with the truth of his forgiveness.  Over and over again we encounter the gift until it becomes ours and we are sent out to share it with others, once we have experienced it for ourselves. 

The truth of the resurrection is seen in the communities that are formed by it.  The church’s lifeblood is forgiveness, the holy amnesty that Jesus offered the fearful disciples. The good news is that we too are offered this gift and invited to share it with those as fearful and reluctant as the disciples that first Easter evening.  

The Church grows in the soil of forgiveness. Churches that grow are marked by forgiveness for that is what each one of us so desperately needs.  The mark of the church is not found in the hands and side of Jesus unless we understand those marks as the tangible signs that we are forgiven people, touched by the Risen One that we might carry and demonstrate that good news to others.  

Forgiveness, peace with God, was the gift of that Easter evening long ago and it is the gift that we still have to offer in this Risen season. Jesus told the disciples to begin in Jerusalem. Begin in Albuquerque. Begin at home.  Begin anywhere you like at work or at school, with those closest to you, or those long estranged. Just begin. For you are the hands of Jesus here and now. Forgiveness is in your hands. 

I wish to acknowledge my debt to both the writing of Sam Portaro on a similar passage in Luke and for his focus on holy amnesty and to Barbara Brown Taylor for the idea of focusing on the hands of Jesus and our hands.

Christians began long ago with a very simple message. Something inconceivable had happened. A dead man – their friend and teacher Jesus - came alive again, speaking, eating and drinking with them, walking through locked doors. He was somehow changed so that he was physical but no longer subject to what we think of as the laws of nature. He walked through locked doors and appeared almost instantaneously in different places, many miles apart. 

This wasn’t just a mythic story, a metaphor about new life. They claimed to have seen it happen with their own eyes. As reported in the book of Acts, We are witnesses to all that [Jesus] did…they put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear…to those who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. St. Paul said [Christ] appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive... 

That’s quite a claim, and I wonder how you respond to it. I remember the first time it really hit me. I had lived with this story since childhood, but it had always been one of those astounding things off in the background I accepted but didn’t pay much attention to, like the infinity of space or the way a flock of birds can all swoop in a new direction, precisely together. 

Then one day in my mid-twenties I was having a conversation with a stranger about various religious figures in history, and he reminded me that Jesus was the only one we know of who came back from the dead. Well, it just floored me. But what hit me was not so much this basic statement. It was the fact that deep down inside me I knew this. What changed my life forever was that I knew that I believed, and still do, that anything is possible in God: Jesus coming back physically from death, walking on water, casting out disease, turning bread into his body. I accept it all. Why? 

Because I have seen that the physical world is infused with Spirit. I have seen people inexplicably, miraculously healed. Out of the blue, a person hears a distinct voice in their heart tell them something that changes their life. Shamans, lamas, Native American medicine men consistently say that they levitate or shape-shift. Ordinary people see visions. A physicist discovers that when he splits a subatomic particle in two and separates the parts by a long distance, what he does to one half affects the other.  They are connected non-materially, spiritually if you will. 

This is no different than your prayer somehow affecting me. One person in Albuquerque prays for another person across the country and something passes instantaneously through time and space and affects that person’s mind or body. The material world is more spiritually-infused than we can imagine. Anything is possible in God. Jesus rose physically from the dead. 

What difference does this make to us? Well, if anything is possible with God, then we may not be as limited as we think. Every instant is filled with unlimited divine potential. As Thomas Merton said At any moment you can break through into the underlying unity which is God's gift in Christ. At any time a door can open, a surprising and creative solution can appear, a new pathway of renewal can rise up to meet us. Resurrection can happen any moment, if we are available to it, if we have eyes to see. 

The other day I was visiting a 95-year-old parishioner in a nursing home, and I asked her what was meaningful to her about Easter. She paused, looked up, and said “I don’t know, there’s something that always happens to me on that day, where my life is opened up and made light and glorious.” It was a beautiful thing to see. Because this is an old, frustrated, and weary woman, and as she said this I watched her become fresh and alive again. The veil was pulled away. At any moment you can break through into the underlying unity which is God's gift in Christ, because everything is filled with unlimited divine potential. 

But this potential is not reserved just for the fulfillment of individuals. It is intended to renew the world, too. Jesus showed this during his lifetime. He created around him a community that was an alternative to society where anything was possible, where unity was the norm. He called it the Kingdom of God. He publicly and scandalously lived it out. 

In this kingdom there was no respect for hierarchy: Gentile or Jew, clean or unclean, rich or poor, women or men – he helped them belong to one another, revealing how sometimes the highest among them were really the lowest and the lowest were the highest. He asked people to return hatred with love, to turn the world upside down. Jesus promoted ultimate loyalty to God’s ways, not to those of the state or religion, or even the family. 

This kingdom was way too direct a challenge to both Roman and religious powers, and so they executed him.

But he resurrected into his disciples. They experienced the Risen Christ as truly within and among them, and they broke through to the underlying unity that is God’s gift in the Risen Christ. Through his friends, Jesus continued to live out his scandalous social vision of mercy and justice. The Kingdom of God now spread throughout the Roman Empire, and they became known as crazy people who shared their resources in common, gathered together all levels of society, showed mercy to the poor, and were willing to die, if need be, if in living according to God’s ways they threatened social norms. 

The resurrection has been the energy that has driven forward this Kingdom of God through the ages. We Christians have rightly earned a bad reputation for things like the Crusades and the Inquisition, but we also have a long and glorious history of showing mercy and building justice. We have started countless hospitals, fed the hungry, visited prisoners, raised up prophets against slavery and racism, and through martyrdom have fueled liberation movements in places like Poland, Latin America, and South Africa. 

The resurrection continues to drive people of faith. We will never create a paradise on earth any more than we will ever get completely beyond our personal issues and problems. Sin and brokenness are far too persistent for that to happen. 

But the energy of resurrection is also persistent, both within the hearts of believers and among the citizens of the Kingdom of God. As it proclaims in the beginning of John’s gospel, The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome it. Or as Gandhi said "When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always."

Today the veil is pulled away. We see, in front of our very eyes, the Paschal Mystery, the astonishing truth that lies inside our own heart, in the midst of all creation, throughout human history. Today we remember that anything is possible with God, that the material world is infused with spirit, that each moment is filled with unlimited divine potential, and that at any time we can break through to the underlying unity that is God’s gift in Christ. Our lives are opened up, and once again, we are made light and glorious. 

Sorry, the full text for this sermon is not available at this time.

Sorry, the full text for this sermon is not available at this time.