"From the Pulpit" - 04.27.2025

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.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

  24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 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.”

  26 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.” 27 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.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 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.”

  30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 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.   John 20:19=31

Sneaking Up on Alleluia!

Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father, and our Lord Jesus Chrisst!  Amen.

If you were with us last Sunday (Easter Sunday), you may recall that I dared anyone to find an alleluia! in the gospel reading from Luke's empty tomb account. And yes, the caveat was a crisp new $100 bill if anyone could find such a reference. (Thanks Zack Fulmer!)  I caught you with your eyes looking down, desperately looking for anything that looked like an alleluia.  But, I knew that that $100 bill was safe, because there IS no alleluia! in Luke's account of the open tomb of Jesus - nor in any of the other three gospel accounts of this event.

The reason? The women at the tomb that 1st Easter morning were terrified. Frightened. Bewildered.  I mean, who would expect a friend or loved one to walk out of his or her own burial site, right?  The alleluias were a long way off for these women, and for the disciples. They had to square it in their minds. They had to find a way to make sense of it based on a lifetime of telling themselves that no one has ever risen from the dead.  No one.

So, the emotions this first Easter morning were mixed.  How could this be, they would ask.  All of this makes preaching on Easter Sunday a particularly challenging task. First of all, you expect some first-timers coming to see what church and Easter may be all about...seeing if the church thing is right for them. Second, there are the C&E's (Christmas and Easter folks) who come to church twice a year, and we love them.  Everybody's expecting some "magic" to happen maybe this Easter morning.  We want RESURRECTION AND ALLELUIA! When we clergy get together, we often compare notes, and we find that for most of us, this first Sunday after Easter is particularly challenging, for the reasons I mentioned above, and more.

So when we read Luke's account of the women at the empty tomb, and don't immediately see or hear any alleluias, we feel as though we're cheated somehow.  But getting to alleluia takes time, now, just as it did for the earliest disciples.  Someone rising from death isn't something we encounter or expect in our lives.  It just doesn't happen, does it?  We're just not prepared for it.

So this week, the 2nd Sunday in Easter, for all three years of the reading cycle, Luke's gospel has the disciples gathered together in a room, with the door locked, wondering just what the heck had happened.  Jesus was actually killed. Dead and buried in his grave. They knew that.  And for some reason, we don't know why, Thomas (the twin) lays back a while.  Maybe he took Jesus' death particularly hard. Maybe his faith in his beloved Jesus was so shattered by this crucifixion event that he had just about given up hope.  Maybe he was questioning his own faith in his beloved Jesus. Had they all been tricked into believing something that just couldn't come true? Can you blame him?

And so I say, it's OK to be skeptical of all of this resurrection stuff.  It's OK, just like Thomas on that first Easter, to want more proof of whether or not it really did happen. After all, that curiosity is baked into our genes as humans - we want to know the whole story, and why. It's OK to be late to the party talking about Jesus and resurrection.  No one in the history of the world had ever done what Jesus did. And, there is/was no greater love than to lay down one's life for another (ref. John 15:13.)  

But the thing is, Jesus offered this amazing act of love not only for his disciples and his community at the time, he did so for all time. For all humanity. For Peter who denied him. For those who persecuted and killed him. For the two other thieves on the cross at Golgotha that day. For the temple leadership who tried time and again to trick him into denying his Jewish heritage. And, for you and me - generations yet to come in the time of Jesus. And for the proud and the haughty. For the rich and the poor. For the saint and for the sinner. For all humankind, doing God's will in gathering all creation back to Eden.

This act of love was meant not just for the women at the tomb. Not just for his closest disciples, but for the world. For the world. For all time. In this act of death, Jesus puts death...to death if you will. And so, who really can fathom it all in one single empty tomb incident.  Who can really understand such love? Who wouldn't want to touch the wounds of Jesus just to be sure it's real?  We all would, of course.

But as close as you and I can get to the real thing is waiting for us every Sunday. At the altar, in sharing the body and blood of Jesus. In hearing those words, "the body of Christ given for you", and "the blood of Christ shed for you." At the pulpit, as we hear words of grace and forgiveness. In our seats, as we pray for a dying world. This act of prayer, in my opinion, is our own way of giving ourselves away just as Jesus did at the cross. We pray for those we love; we pray for those not like us; we pray for people we don't particularly like.  Prayer is a sacrificial act in much the same way as giving oneself up on the cross.  We let go of hatred maybe, dislikes perhaps, in order to lift up those we both like and don't like.

So, dear church. It's OK to come at this resurrection thing slowly. Deliberately.  Questioning it every step along the way.  It's OK to want to see those same wounds that Thomas wanted to see. It's OK to scratch your head and say "Say what!?" But when you encounter such love in Jesus Christ, the love that as Paul himself said, passes all  human understanding, you will sooner or later come to say, just like Thomas did that first Easter, "My Lord and my God"!  You just won't be able to help yourself. It's OK to sneak up on Alleluia. Amen.

Announcement:

Men's Breakfast - Next Sunday, May 4th, we pick up again with our Saturday Men's Breakfast at 9:00 am.  Join us, won't you? Bring a friend along. Pastor Greg will offer a short biblical lesson following the breakfast.  Sign up in the church lobby/narthex now.