Second Sunday of Easter 2017

Acts 2:14a, 22-32 and 1 Peter 1:3-9 and John 20:19-31

This sermon was given as visiting preacher at St Nicholas’ Church, Hedworth.

I wonder whether you have ever felt that you have been misrepresented? And if so, I wonder how that felt? I would suggest that many of the characters we meet in the Gospels have been misrepresented by assumptions made about them down the centuries, and this is certainly true of Thomas. Thomas has been saddled with the title, Doubting Thomas. In fact, the Gospels tell us that all of the disciples doubted: that they doubted the testimony of the women; that they doubted the reliability of their own eyes when presented with the risen Jesus; that their joy was mixed with understandable disbelief at the too-good-to-be-true; that their tentative steps towards worshipping Jesus had to negotiate their doubt that this is what God would want of monotheists. But nowhere do the Gospels single Thomas out as capital-letter-D Doubting.

Instead, the gospel names him Thomas, the Hebrew for ‘Twin’ – and translates the name into Greek – Didymus – for the benefit of Gentile hearers. What is unclear is whether Thomas is his name, or, like the Peter of Simon Peter, a nickname. After all, why would the parents of twins name one of them, Twin? There is a school of thought that claims he was called the Twin because he so closely reflected the person and actions of Jesus. You may remember the moment when Jesus decides to go to Lazarus, and his disciples question his sanity: we came away from there because the religious leaders were trying to stone you; and you’re going back? But Thomas declares, Let us go with him, that we may die too. Or, I’d rather be dead with Jesus than alive without him. Thomas is loyal, and brave.

When Jesus first appears to his disciples, Thomas is not present. And he is not prepared to settle for a second-hand account, to be around on the grounds of other people’s faith. He needs to know that Jesus is risen for himself. A week later, Jesus answers his prayer. And Jesus invites Thomas to move from a place of doubting to a place of believing something new. I don’t think Jesus has a one-time step in mind: rather, I think that Jesus is showing us the process we are being invited into. Doubt is the necessary starting-point in order to believe something new. Unless we have doubts about where we are, we will never go anywhere; unless we doubt our perspective, we’ll never see the world from a different point-of-view.

In fact, this process has already been demonstrated by Thomas, so we might say that – far from chastising him – Jesus is affirming him. Of all the disciples hiding behind a locked door, Thomas was not there. Thomas doubted that they would get very far unless someone was prepared to go out, to contact friends, to return with bread, and wine. Perhaps he doubted that any of the others would be the one to go: after all, it will involve genuine risk, and Thomas has shown that he is not afraid to die. At some point, his doubts are enough to move him beyond the door.

It is doubt that opens us up to move beyond the known, and belief that opens up a whole new territory to us. When he puts his hand in Jesus’ spear-torn side, Thomas steps into a newly-opened space, understanding for the first time that Jesus is his Lord and his God. This same process will carry him beyond the familiar, all the way to the south of India, taking the good news of Jesus Christ to the very end of the world.

And these things are written in order 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.

In order that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah – the one sent by God to save us – and the Son of God – and therefore our Lord. That you may believe that Jesus is your Saviour and your Lord: the one who has set you free, and the one whom you have been set free to live for. Because it is in knowing that Jesus is both our Saviour and our Lord that we enter-into, and continue to move further and further into, the fullness of life God hopes for you to know.

The starting place is doubt: is coming to doubt the story of your self-sufficiency, the story in which you are the heroic centre-of-the-universe, the story in which you are the Author of your own Destiny. Such doubt is not the same thing as believing that you, beloved child of God, are worthless: Jesus embraced and defeated death because of your infinite worth in God’s eyes. But it is doubt that moves us to long to see Jesus, if not bodily, in Scripture and prayer, in the bread and the wine; to know him more fully than we have known him before. Doubt, opening into belief; and doubt, opening into belief; and doubt, opening into belief; until the day when, with Thomas, we do see Jesus face-to-face. Indeed, it is this faith-full doubting that you have exercised and continue to exercise in seeing what might come of Messy Church and Café Church. So come: don’t let your doubts hold you back; but, instead, let them take you on an adventure with Jesus. Who knows where you might go together?

Fifth Sunday of Lent 2017

(Ezekiel 37:1-14 and Romans 8:6-11 and) John 11:1-45

Today is the start of Passiontide. It marks a turning-point in the Season of Lent, from following Jesus into the wilderness to walking in his footsteps towards Jerusalem. From here we will journey to Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and, at last, Easter Day: triumphal entry, last supper, trials and crucifixion, burial, rest, and resurrection. Today is the turning-point.

We’ve been asking ourselves, through Lent, who is Jesus to me? And today, I want to ask again, who is this Jesus? Who was he to those who first met him?

Today, the Gospel – or, good news – begins with a family, a brother and two sisters, Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. I love the way in which they are introduced into the story, because it is clear that this family is well-known to, and well-loved by, the community John is writing for. You know Mary, he writes; the one who anointed Jesus feet with perfume. That hasn’t happened yet, in the story. John doesn’t recount that event until the next chapter. But the people he wrote for, the first hearers of his telling of the good news, know exactly who he is speaking of. Why? Because this family are so close to Jesus, so loved by him. This family who had opened their home to Jesus when he passed through Bethany, when he visited neighbouring Jerusalem. A love for one another so deep that the sisters do not even need to name Lazarus: he, and they, are known by their identity as those whom Jesus loved. And in their hour of need, they send to Jesus.

We find Jesus himself in a very low place – geographically and emotionally. He has gone from Jerusalem, up in the hills, down to River Jordan near where it empties into the Dead Sea, the lowest place on the surface of the Earth. He has gone to the region where David hid, centuries earlier, when King Saul was searching for him to kill him; and he has gone for the same reason. In Jerusalem, very recently, an influential lobby had feared him so much that they had been willing to risk the wrath of Rome by carrying out the death penalty, stoning Jesus to death. He has made a strategic retreat. Almost certainly the Psalms of David penned in similar circumstances will be on his lips. And in this place of grief, he hears news that a dear, an oh-so-loved, friend is seriously ill.

I wonder how he felt. I wonder whether you can relate: that sense of kicking-a-man-when-he-is-down; that sense of it-never-rains-but-it-pours; that sense of is-there-really-any-need-for-so-much-sorrow-at-once? Through the storm, he hears the still, small voice: wait, rest in me.

He waits. He rests. And then he turns his face towards Jerusalem. And the disciples ask, Are you out of your mind? Don’t you remember why we left there? If you go back, they will kill you. But Jesus is going back, is going to be with his grieving friends. And Thomas makes a decision: Let us also go, that we may die with him. I’d rather be dead with Jesus than alive without him. Come what may, being where he is, is where I need to be. (That, by the way, is why Thomas struggles so much when he alone of the disciples, brave enough to go out in search of supplies when they are hiding behind a locked door in fear for their lives, misses being there when Jesus, risen from the dead, stands in their midst.) In this place, where the world as we have known it has already come to an end, what we need is Jesus.

When Martha hears that Jesus is on his way, she goes out to meet him. He is the hope that she is holding on to: had he been present, Lazarus would not have died; and now that he is present, even now God will give him whatever he asks. Yes, she knows that there will be a Day when God makes all things right; but Jesus makes all the difference in the here-and-now, whatever comes, because he is God come to be with us, come to lead us into tomorrow.

Jesus wants to see Mary, also; here, privately, away from the crowds. She comes to him; but others follow. Mary comes to Jesus, kneels in front of him, and washes his feet with her tears. She’ll do the same again, at a later time, a dinner given in their home in his honour. Undone by emotion: grief now; thankfulness mingled with fearful anticipation then. She does not hold back in his presence, and he can take it. He is not embarrassed; does not feel awkward; will accept no apology from her, as those who weep often feel pressure to offer. Jesus is deeply moved. And so are those who look on. And this is messy: for John tells us that those who came to comfort Mary ad Martha were ‘the Jews’ which is his shorthand for the influential group centred on the life of the temple, many of whom wanted Jesus dead. In other words, his friends’ friends were his enemies. How does that feel?

Jesus asks to be taken to his friend’s tomb, and as they tell him, ‘Come and see’ – echoing the words with which he invited two of John the Baptist’s disciples to follow him right back at the beginning of the Gospel – something inside him breaks. Jesus began to weep. To weep for his loss. To weep for his friends’ loss. To weep because of the complexity of a world in which among those good enough to care for Mary and Martha were those evil enough to want him dead – some of whom will be transformed from enemies to friends in what will unfold; others of whom will double their enmity, seeking not only to kill Jesus but to kill Lazarus, to put his sisters through pain-upon-pain. Jesus began to weep, with those who weep and those who were angry or cynical or perplexed. Jesus was greatly disturbed and deeply moved, in solidarity with us all.

A tomb – a cave, with a stone covering the entrance. Take away the stone. God’s glory is not seen in keeping death behind a closed door, in Moving On or Getting Over It. Jesus calls Lazarus out, gives instruction for him to be unbound. And I believe. I believe that this took place, that Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave; that this was a miracle that helped prepare us for his own death and burial and resurrection. But I also know that this is the exception, not the rule. That in time Lazarus did die again. That everyone we love must die. That grief is common to all humanity. That this is the context in which we listen to this good news.

When we find ourselves where Mary, Martha, Jesus, Thomas found themselves, the good news we need is Jesus coming to us: Jesus, who brings God’s glory to the most unpromising of circumstances; Jesus bringing something of the future into the present; Jesus, who rescues us; Jesus unashamedly letting us wash his feet with our tears; Jesus weeping with us; Jesus unafraid to have us take out our loved one – even if we are afraid of what we might find – and unwrap their memory, and set them free, over and over again. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

Some of us know this; and some of us are yet to know it; and some of us need to know it today. That is why we return here, together, year on year. That is why we wait, and weep, and help one another to believe, and step into the light, and bind up broken hearts and unbind the constriction of unhelpful expectations, in the precious name of our Saviour, Jesus, and to the glory of God. Amen.