Sermon (Fr Peay) April 8, 2018

St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church – Delafield, Wisconsin

2nd Sunday of Easter/April 8, 2018

V. Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.

[texts: Acts 5:27-32/John 20:19‑31]

"Seeing is believing." This common sense commonplace is fairly straightforward. If you can't see it, can't verify it through your own experience, it isn't real, isn't believable. I'm sure that many folks would say that "doubting" Thomas should be the patron saint of scientists. Didn't he have the researcher's mind as he looked for the evidence to corroborate the other Apostles' assertion, "We have seen the Lord"? Sure, he had seen Jesus bring Lazarus back from the dead, but this was different. Thomas had seen Jesus on the cross. He had seen the nails and the spear do their work. He had seen the stone seal the entrance to the tomb. For Thomas to find this hypothesis credible there would have to be a lot of hard evidence ‑‑ nail prints and spear wound touched and probed ‑‑ before he could believe.

To be honest, Thomas wasn't much of a scientist. While science ‑‑ and I should remind us all that scientia, knowledge, or its pursuit, is the proper description for more than just the physical or experimental disciplines ‑‑ involves facts, evidence, and proof, it also requires belief. A true scientist believes in what she or he is about. Thomas Kuhn changed the way scientists looked at their field when he introduced the concept of the ‘paradigm shift’ in his Structures of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn, however, ultimately framed his description of paradigmatic shifts in religious language: faith, belief, conversion. One has to have faith in the paradigm, believe in the work undertaken, and/or be converted to a new way of perceiving what one sees. Thomas, it seems to me, would have benefited from meeting his twentieth century namesake.

When I was in high school we watched a film on the circulatory system, "Hemo the Magnificent." Something from that film has always stuck with me. At the very end of this rather fine documentary on research into how our life's blood works there was a reflective section on the task of the researcher. They quoted Max Planck – the father of quantum physics – who said: Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.

[Where Is Science Going? (1932)] And then they quoted Paul to Timothy, "Prove ye all things to see if they are of God."

You see, a believer isn't a Polyanna, a naif. Frankly, I distrust those who blithely wish to discount the value of the intellect and reason. My studies of the Christian faith have led me to believe because of the keen intellects who have been witnesses to the wonder of God's work among us in Jesus Christ. Scholars like Anselm of Canterbury who uttered what I have taken as my own motto: Fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeks understanding) or “America’s theologian” Jonathan Edwards, who saw God's beauty not only in the Word, but in his studies of biology and botany as well. Christians stand in a marvelous intellectual tradition, as Anselm said, "I believe in order to understand" (credo ut intelligam); to that I say 'Amen.'

Thomas got his chance when Jesus again appeared in the locked upper room, spoke his calming words, "Peace be with you." And then he took the 'Thomas challenge,' saying to him, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe."  He saw and he believed, but Jesus had more to say, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe." Those words, that blessing is for us ‑‑ for you and for me.

Peter declared the core of the Christian proclamation, the essence of our story, when he stood before the council, just as he had before his fellow Israelites in Acts chapter two. He preached that God raised Jesus up from death, "because it was impossible for him to be held in its power." John Chrysostom in his Easter homily speaks of how death thought it had gotten hold of just another poor mortal and found itself facing God‑in‑the‑flesh and was overcome. Peter and the other witnesses to the resurrection were brought beyond their own limited understanding of life and death; through Christ they were brought into the presence of the author of life and death. The beauty of Peter's proclamation is realized in his first letter, "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" (1 Peter 1:8-9). As Jesus said to Thomas, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."

The truth of the matter is that even the apostles had to go beyond experience to come to faith in the resurrection. Although they were "eyewitnesses" to this remarkable occurrence ‑‑ how else could you explain the presence of the Lord in his glorified body being able to come through solid walls? ‑‑ they had to come to a whole new understanding of God's presence and of themselves. For the Christian, believing is seeing.

Thomas saw and believed. We do not see, yet believe and as a result begin to see the world in a wholly different way. When we come to know that believing is seeing we look at ourselves differently. We realize that here is a person loveable and possessed of enormous worth ‑‑ a child of God ‑‑ as the hymnist says, "Changed from glory into glory." When we come to know that believing is seeing we look at those around us differently. We see all persons as loveable, children of God, children for whom Christ died and was raised up again. How can we possibly judge ourselves, or anyone else, in the manner we used to? How can we possibly ever look down upon or condemn another ‑‑ one for whom Christ died and was raised up ‑‑ because they do not rise to our standard? How can we look at any material thing in the same way, since it also shares in the benefit of the fresh start given all creation by the resurrection?

John tells us that, "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." If believing is seeing, Jesus continues to do many signs through his body: the church. If believing is seeing, you and I become the signs through which others may come to believe and have life in his name. If believing is seeing, and I believe it is, the stuff and the people of everyday life become sacraments, means of encounter with the living Christ.

Believing is seeing and what we see in our believing leads us to cry out: "My Lord and my God!" Amen. Alleluia!

Sermon (Fr Cunningham) April 15, 2018

I find it interesting that I still come across things in scripture that I have missed, which have been hiding in plain sight.  This morning is just such a morning for me where we read, “Jesus himself stood among the disciples and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’”  The obvious takeaways from this story are that Jesus was really there and that he is not a ghost and that in his resurrected state he has flesh and bones.  All well and good but we kind of covered that bit of it on Easter Day.  The thing that I find so interesting in it and the thing that I have been missing in all the times I have read it comes in the bit about the hands and feet.  Why is Jesus asking them to look at them because those are the places where he was pierced by the nails when he was crucified.  For as we see other places in scripture his hands and feet still carry the scars of his crucifixion.  And this is the part that I have somehow overlooked and failed to grasp its significance.  For after all if Jesus has been raised from the dead and now has a glorified body why does he still carry the scars from his time on earth – can’t he make those things go away?  I mean he is the Son of God, he cured other people of deformity, can’t he do the work that most any decent plastic surgeon could do?  And the answer to that is certainly yes.  Jesus could make it all go away, but he didn’t and so the question remains as to why.  Why does Jesus comeback bearing the scars of his crucifixion?

            One answer is that he wanted to be recognizable.  If you remember from last week the Disciple Thomas said, "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."  Thomas laid down a criterion for belief that could only be met with visible scars.  But I am not sure if this is a full explanation - that it was done for the benefit of the disciples.  Jesus seems to suggest after Thomas has announced that Jesus is Lord and God that such shows of scars and wounds should not have to be necessary.  He states, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."  No I think the only explanation that makes the most sense is that the scars and the marks of the nails have somehow become part of whom Jesus is - that some of the suffering on this earth stayed with him.  Which means, if look at Jesus as the pioneer and perfector of our faith, the one who went before us, this means that our wounds and injuries are also part of what makes us who we are.  We will one day have resurrected bodies, but some of the slings and arrows that we have suffered while on this earth will still be present in those new bodies.  Which I guess may sound disappointing; I for one had hoped to have more important hair in the next life.  But even following that logic we still have not quite gotten to the point of why this happens.  Why do injuries and wounds follow us?  Well, you are in luck because I have a theory.  And just as a caveat some of what I am about to say is a bit of my personal theory, but I don’t think it is heretical so we should be safe.  If I am wrong and it is heretical if you could wait to burn me until the service is finished I would appreciate it.  So let’s start with Jesus and the nature of the wounds that we see today. 

            The Prophet Isaiah says, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”  Part of what this is telling us in terms of who Jesus is and what he did is that his bruises and his wounds are the means by which we have been healed.  The bruises may have been done in malice, but what came out of them was our salvation.  So therefore, when the disciples are seeing the wounds of Christ they are not only seeing the brutality with which Christ suffered, but they are also seeing the means by which they, and by extension we, have been made right with God.  And so now on to my theory.  Christ’s wounds remain because the ultimate result of them is something wonderful and beautiful.  In this life we have all suffered – some of us more than others, but we have all experienced times of nastiness and vitriol, pain and hardship.  Times where we have been despised and hated and unfortunately for some of us even had physical suffering.  As best I know none of us have actually been crucified, but we have had experiences in our lives that left us wounded.  And the question is what have we done with our woundedness?  Have we used it to make things better?  And if we have it seems that these things may remain throughout eternity, because they have been redeemed by God.

            And I know that may sound like a strange proposition, but let me tell a story and see if it makes it a little more clear.  The first parish in which I served I worked for a priest named John.  A little over a year into my job John’s wife went to the hospital with what they thought was a pinched nerve.  Three days later she was dead from septicemia.  It was horrible and tragic and John obviously went into a deep and profound period of mourning.  Four months after the death of John’s wife, just after Christmas a young man in our parish shot and killed himself.  The thing I remember so vividly about this experience was that after John had met with the family, he told me that if he had met with them four months ago he would have had nothing to say to this family who had just lost their son.  He would not have been able to understand the level or nature of their grief, but because of his own tragedy he was able to bring someone else through tragedy.  His woundedness helped to heal someone else.  Carl Jung developed the phrase “wounded healer” which was picked up by Henri Nouwen in his book of the same name.  In that book Nouwen essentially argues that woundedness can serve as a source of strength and healing.  Which is what Jesus did and it is what we are called to do as well.  By our wounds we can heal others.

            Many of us in life will experience things that we don’t like.  All indications are that Jesus did not really want to be crucified, but the question is how do we make those scars part of who we are in a way that is glorifying to God.  Sometimes you will hear Christians say after some tragedy that it was God’s will.  I am not one that tends to subscribe to such theories of fatalism, which posit that everything that happens is because God orchestrated it to be that way.  But what I do subscribe to is the belief that all things can be used to the glory of God.  When Christ was crucified it was the single worst act in human history.  The one person who ever existed who was without sin was crucified as if he committed a wrong.  But through this horrible and wrong act we have been saved.

Christ’s wounds are a reminder of the fact that God can redeem anything.  Which means that our scars and our woundedness can be redeemed by God so that they can be used to further God’s kingdom.  And it appears that those wounds, if so wonderfully and beautifully redeemed, will be with us in the next life.  Because they are no longer signs of the victory of sin and evil but are instead the signs of God’s victory.  Yes we will all suffer in this life, we will all have things befall us that are not of our making that will wound and damage us, but God can redeem these things for his glory so that we may be his both now and forevermore.           

Sermon (Fr Cunningham) April 1, 2018

            In popular culture Easter is the other holiday that Christians celebrate.  And it is in many ways considered a lesser holiday, which I think is largely because it does not have quite the marketing team that Christmas has.  Oversized egg hiding bunnies and Peeps marshmallow candies hardly compete with Christmas Trees, Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman.  If you want further proof of this popular culture glut ask yourself if you have ever heard of a radio station in the run up to Easter dedicating an entire month to nothing but “popular” Easter songs.  In fact, I will lower the bar even more and ask if you can simply name two “popular” Easter songs (and I will even spot you Here Comes Peter Cottontail).  If Christmas is the Elephant in the room, Easter is more of the house fern in the room.  There is nothing wrong with it, but no one pays it much attention.  And I can’t decide if this is good or bad.  Every Christmas going back to at least 1965 when Charlie Brown lamented the commercialization of Christmas, someone has expressed their disappointment in what Christmas has become believing that its current incarnation makes us miss out on the real point of it all; and that is very much true.  However, by Christmas occupying such a large place in the popular mindset it can make it seem like Easter is not very important.  It sort of gets viewed in the same way as Flag Day is in comparison to the Fourth of July – cute but not really necessary.  However, for the early Church and for much of Christian history Easter was the big day and Christmas was the lesser event.  And while I have to confess that I tend to get much more excited about Christmas than I do about Easter – Easter is really the most important event on the Christian Calendar.  So let’s take a few moments and examine why today is such a big deal.

            This morning we hear of two disciples running to the tomb after Mary Magdalene has told them that the body of Jesus was missing.  We read, “Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”  I find this passage a little bit mysterious for it says that the disciples believed, but concurrent with that it says that they did not understand.  Which I think in some ways may encapsulate the PR difficulty with Easter – it is not easy to understand.  The disciples believe that Jesus had risen from the dead but they do not understand what it all meant – Jesus did not leave behind any tracts with names like “What Really Happened on Easter Day.”   And honestly, I am not sure any of us fully understand what happened on Easter Day.  Theologians have thought about it for centuries and still do not have a single theory.  If you would like some theological terms to describe what happened, here are just a few of the ways that people have set about to explain the death and resurrection of Jesus:  There is substitutionary atonement, Christus Victor theory, Satisfaction Theory, Recapitulation theory, Moral Influence Theory, Ransom Theory and so on.  Babies being born in Mangers are relatively easy to understand whereas death and resurrection are not.  However, while theologians may debate the “how”, I think we can fairly safely get to the “what” of today’s events.    

            C.S. Lewis writing in 1950 had this to say when describing the events of today and it is a little long, but its worth listening to for it gets to the “what” of today’s events.  He says, “Something perfectly new in the history of the Universe had happened. Christ had defeated death. The door which had always been locked had for the very first time been forced open. This is something quite distinct from mere ghost-survival. I don’t mean that they disbelieved in ghost-survival. On the contrary, they believed in it so firmly that, on more than one occasion, Christ had had to assure them that He was not a ghost. The point is that while believing in survival they yet regarded the Resurrection as something totally different and new. The Resurrection narratives are not a picture of survival after death; they record how a totally new mode of being has arisen in the universe. Something new had appeared in the universe: as new as the first coming of organic life. This Man, after death, does not get divided into ‘ghost’ and ‘corpse’. A new mode of being has arisen. That is the story. What are we going to make of it?”

            This new mode of being as Lewis describes it helps to explain the difficulty that Mary Magdalene had in recognizing Jesus.  Jesus did not look like he had a few days earlier.  He was not his old self with a few more cuts and bruises (even though those were there), but was rather a being that had passed through death and come back to show not only that it was possible but what this form of life was like.  Easter tells us something very different than what a lot of people think.  It tells us that we who believe in Jesus Christ will also one day pass through death and emerge as something the same and yet different.  We will not be ghosts, nor will we be eternal versions of our current selves, but we will be physical and spiritual beings like we currently are, but glorified and made new.  Today is an assurance that we have been made right with God and that death is not the final word.  And it also serves as a preview of what comes after death. 

            Throughout history death has always been the great unknown.  Egyptian Pharaohs topped off their tombs with worldly treasure to take on what they saw as their final journey.  This treasure was there in order to ensure a smooth transition to the afterlife. Vikings had to be buried or burned with the right kinds of goods so that they could enter the afterlife in the same status as they had had in their previous life and today we have various scientists trying to find the right formula to ensure immortality to those able to pay for it.   Everyone across history has tried to figure out what happens when we die and how to guard against something going wrong, but today we are told how it goes down.  We are told that death is not the end and that through Christ’s death and resurrection we can participate in that.  The price of admission is pretty low, we don’t have to be wealthy or of a certain class, we just have to believe in Jesus as Lord and call upon his name.  Easter is about us being with God forever and we will be with God forever in resurrected bodies, like the one Jesus shows to us today.

            Christmas certainly looks nicer and has snazzier TV specials, but as far as answering the question that has occupied humanity for at least as long as we have records, Easter is without peer.  It answers the big question of what happens.  That is what happens after we die.  Easter solves the great mystery of life.  I could certainly offer theories about why people don’t seem to care that much about it, but most of those would be fairly cynical and Easter is a day of great joy, so let’s not spoil the mood.  Instead, let’s rejoice in the fact that we worship a God who sent his Son to save us from ourselves and has given us a pathway to eternal life.  Today boldly announces to the world that the thing that has been the most feared across the ages is not something to fear, because as the Prophet Isaiah predicted God has swallowed up death forever.  Yes Christ the Lord has risen indeed and through that we may be his both now and forevermore.