2nd Sunday of Easter.
There is treasure in our pews! The real treasure of course is you. But the other treasure I’m referring to the prayer book. It’s true that for those of us who did not grow up in the Episcopal church, using this book in worship can be awkward and cumbersome. For those of you cradle Episcopalians, using this book in worship is second nature. But you have also lived through the battles that have been fought over this book – what prayers to include, what the shape of the liturgies will be, what theological orientation will shine through the brightest.
But beyond the consternation of change, and beyond the awkwardness of trying to balance the prayer book, the hymnal, and the bulletin, this book provides language for prayer that is as poetic as it is precise. This morning’s collect for the Second Sunday of Easter is a wonderful example:
We began with an address to the “Almighty and Everlasting God.” And so, in those few words, we proclaimed that the God to whom Jesus gave his whole self without any reservation is the Eternal One over whom the forces of death and destruction and despair cannot prevail. When Jesus carried the wounds of the entire world and all the fury evil could muster – and God raised him up to life again, it left an indelible mark upon this world: Love is the ultimate Reality. Love Reigns.
And so we began “Almighty and Everlasting God”, our own shorthand affirmation that as we give our lives, our time, our property, our resources into God’s keeping, when we follow the demands of Love, we are fully supported in the arms of real and lasting Power.
And we have plenty of Christian heroes and heroines who have proven this. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa are two well-known people who stepped off the tried and true paths of security into God’s security and brought healing and courage into situations of danger and despair. But there are many Christians who have done so quietly, and their courage and conviction remain unknown. A Japanese woman whom my husband met many years ago, told him the story of going with her mother every Sunday morning to the perimeter of the camp where they were interred during WWII. She vividly remembers standing with her mother at the barbed wire fence, with guns bearing down on them. Every Sunday, her mother sang with joy: “This is my Father’s World, O let me ne’er forget. That though the wrong seems of’t so strong, God is the Ruler yet.” So, we too, on this 2nd Sunday of Easter, affirm that the God of Jesus Christ is Almighty and Everlasting. (Do I hear an Amen?)
The morning collect continues: “who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation.”
The Paschal mystery is actually a scandal – it is the scandal that God allied God’s Almighty and Everlasting self with the poorest of the poor and died a criminal’s death, a defeated nobody in an occupied land – and continued to offer forgiveness and peace. Truth be told, this is as scandalous now as it was then. We inure ourselves to the reality of Jesus’ defeat and death and defeat through many repetitions of churchy phrases. We pretty it up with jeweled crosses. Regardless of what you thought about Mel Gibson’s film, the Passion of the Christ brought into modern consciousness again, the brutality of Rome’s occupation and executions, the nature of sacrifice, and the gratuitous violence which Jesus suffered. The Son of God suffered gratuitous violence similar to what the world’s poor suffer daily – torture, hunger, thirst, drawn guns and swords, loneliness and loss. So this is the Paschal mystery …. Christ emptied out on the cross in identification with wounded humanity. But that is not the whole of the mystery. The whole of the mystery is Easter: Christ raised up to glorious life, Christ drawing us in as full partners in this resurrection life.
Jesus drew the first disciples into resurrection life – into this new covenant of reconciliation. Three days after his crucifixion, Jesus’ disciples were scared out of their minds. Just having witnessed the bloody execution of their leader, they were crouched behind locked doors, quietly trying to fade into the woodwork. They were deeply shamed by the depth of their fear, deeply shamed that they had abandoned Jesus when he needed them most. They were still mired in jealousy and rivalry. There had always been rivalry between them: who was closest to Jesus, who would sit at his right hand, who would follow him to death. It is easy to imagine that the rivalry had turned to who was grieving the most. Who felt the worst. Who would be the leader now….
But after the resurrection, Jesus immediately headed back to this same sorry cowering group that had betrayed him, run away, given in, maybe come to blows with one another. He didn’t go find another group that might be easier to work with. A little more “spiritual”. A little less cantankerous. He didn’t even head back to this group to let them have it. To call them on the carpet with a lecture. He never said: “Don’t you get it yet. All this time with me. All my teaching. All my attention. And what is this with the locked doors, and especially what is it with not believing Mary Magdalene – who’s seen me, who’s talked with me, who’s told you the good news!”. I can easily imagine him getting fairly worked up in frustration with them. Can’t you?
Instead, he greeted them saying “Peace be with you.” He wasn’t ashamed to call them his friends. He hadn’t given up on them. From the other side of their betrayal and cowardice, he offered them peace.
And it wasn’t a mushy kind of peace. It wasn’t the cocktail party “hi, how are you,” kind of peace. This was the Peace that passes all understanding. This was the Peace that in St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Cor. 13: 7)
This Peace made reconciliation among the disciples and Jesus and us possible - because it rested on the work of the cross and the resurrection. It did not rest on the disciple’s attempts to deny or forget or retaliate for those places and peoples and times where they had been wounded, or where they had inflicted harm. Reconciliation still rests on the work of the cross and the resurrection. It does not depend on our attempts to forget or retaliate for times where we have been wounded or deny where we have inflicted harm.
“Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This is the Peace that God offers to you and to me and to the world. It is the Peace that the Resurrection makes possible. The Peace of God’s forgiveness. God’s friendship. God’s faithfulness to us. God’s renewal of all things.
As we are renewed and reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may we be granted the grace to “show forth in our lives, what we profess by our faith."” (2nd Sunday Easter Collect) By the outstretched wounded hands of Jesus, we are offered the peace that passes all understanding. And we are commissioned to go out and offer this same peace to others.
The Peace of the Lord be always with you.
And the people say: And also with you.
Amen.
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