2 Easter B

2 Easter B

Transcribed from a sermon given

April 15, 2012

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By the Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

On this second Sunday of Easter season, the Sunday after we celebrate Easter, the readings are an interesting combination of looking forward and acknowledging the resurrection. There is a clear sense when you look at them that the resurrection was not an end in itself, but a new beginning. It begins with the collect for the day, the prayer for the day, which usually sets up the main themes of the readings. If you read it you will see that it prays for all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s body that they may show forth in their lives what they profess in their faith. In other words, it is a prayer for the church, for the people of God.

Then we have this first reading from Acts, which describes in idyllic terms what the early church looked like. Everyone was of one mind and there was complete unity. People sold what they had and gave it to the disciples. Then the disciples gave to the ones who needed it. I do find it kind of interesting that very rarely do I hear this passage talked about by those who say that they want the United States to be a Christian nation. But that’s all right, because it didn’t last for long.

Next we have the psalm that continues the theme of how good it is for people to be in unity. Once again reaffirming how important it is for the church, the whole body of Christ, to be one.

Then follows the reading from the first letter of John in which he states, “We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.” There is this sense of passing on his experience, his experiences with Christ, to the gathered community so that they can know the joy of the resurrected Christ, and to serve as the community of believers.

Finally we read from John’s Gospel the description of Christ’s appearance to the disciples. Right there in that first resurrection appearance to the disciples he breathes on them and says to them, “As the father has sent me so I send you.” There was not even a week off after Easter. After all the trauma of the crucifixion, they experience the risen Christ and immediately they are sent. They have work to do. This is a new beginning.

We always read his particular Gospel on the first Sunday after Easter. This Sunday is often called Thomas Sunday because we always read about Thomas’ doubt. And that is important because I think every single one of us here, every Christian in the world, has at some point in their lives had some doubt. If you haven’t had some doubt at some point about the resurrection than you really haven’t taken it on as your own or really struggled with this amazing and highly improbable thing that happened. But what strikes me today was not so much Thomas and his doubt, but how Jesus became known to the disciples through the scars on his hands and on his side. The scars are not important in other resurrection appearances in the other Gospels. On the journey to Emmaus with a couple of disciples he becomes known in the breaking of the bread. For Mary Magdalene in the garden outside the tomb Christ made himself known by speaking her name. But here in the Gospel attributed to John, Christ makes himself known through his scars. This is the only place where it is so important. And it is obviously very important to John. Not only does Jesus say peace be with you the first time he appears, but he then shows his hands and his side. It is only after they have seen his scars that the disciples rejoice. And to make sure that nobody misses the importance of the scars, Thomas says I’m not going to believe unless I touch the nail holes in his hand and put my hand in his side.

For some reason the writer of John’s Gospel felt it was very important that the risen Christ still had the scars, and that is what jumped out at me this week as I was thinking about this sermon. Why would that be? Especially since John’s Gospel is the one that starts out by saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” It has a very high Christology, this sense of Jesus being the Christ and also being one with God. And yet, when it comes to the resurrection the focus is on the scars. A very incarnate aspect of who the Christ was.

Now I don’t claim to have a final theological interpretation of this, I am sure that lots has been written on it, but I couldn’t find any this week. But I had to wonder why it was so important to John that there be the scars? One of the reasons might have been that one of the primary controversies in the very early church was a debate between the Gnostics and the people who later became the orthodox Christians. Some of the Gnostics claimed that God, Jesus, couldn’t have actually died on the cross but he was watching it, and that whatever it was that was nailed to the cross wasn’t really Jesus. Not another person but some kind of representation because the Christ, the risen one, couldn’t have suffered on the cross.

It is kind of like the problem that the Muslims have with Christianity because they say, understandably, that God could not have suffered. God could not have died on a cross and you are claiming that. And yes we do. We claim that God suffered and died on a cross.

So at the time of the writing of John’s Gospel there was a debate about that. About what was, who was this risen Christ. Was it the man Jesus that died on the cross? Was it an angel? Was it his spiritual essence, but not his body? Who was this? And it is a question we ask today. Who is this risen Christ? For the writer of the Gospel of John it was important to say that this risen Christ still had the marks on his hands.  This risen Christ is the same one that was nailed to the cross. This is the one who suffered. This is the one who died.

So what difference does that make? Well to me it makes a lot of difference. When I pray, when talk to Christ, when I walk with Christ, I find great solace in the fact that it is the one who has suffered. That I walk with the one who was crucified. That through his pain and his suffering there is a connection as a human being. It is meaningful to me that the one I relate to fully experienced all of what it meant to be human, including the pain, and the suffering and the wounds.

And I think this is important when we think about the Church as I was talking about at the beginning of the sermon. The Church, the community of all believers, is the body of Christ in the world. We are part of the body of Christ. And in spite of that first idealized description of them all being together in unity and giving up everything, we know that didn’t last for very long. If you read just a little bit further in Acts you’ll discover that there was one family that didn’t give everything they got for selling their house and there were some repercussions. I’ll let you read that for yourself. It is a very interesting story.

And we know from Paul’s letters that the churches that he began that started out with such unity and joy began to fray around the edges and to not always treat people equally. And we know when we look around the church in the world today that it is far from perfect. It has a lot of wounds, a lot of scars, like the body of the risen Christ. The body of the risen Christ had holes in his hands and his side. And the body of Christ as the Church is also wounded. We have scars. Each one of us has our own personal scars. Each church community has its own community scars. But that is part of what we have to offer. That is part of what we have to give to others - our woundedness. Many of us have read about the concept of the wounded healer. The idea that for the therapist or the doctor or the nurse it is often their own wounds, their own suffering, their own scars that gives them the power to help others and to heal them. And for us as a church community one of the most precious things that we offer to one another is our scars and our woundedness, to walk with one another through our pain and our suffering.

The church, the community of Christ, the Body of Christ in the world, is in many ways broken and wounded and scared because it is made up of people who are broken, and wounded and scared, but Christ’s resurrection was known to his disciples through his scars. Let us be the body of Christ in the world.

Amen