{"id":115,"date":"2010-04-11T15:14:59","date_gmt":"2010-04-11T20:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/?p=115"},"modified":"2010-04-11T15:14:59","modified_gmt":"2010-04-11T20:14:59","slug":"sermon-seeing-with-our-hearts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/2010\/04\/11\/sermon-seeing-with-our-hearts\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon: Seeing with Our Hearts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texts:\u00a0 John 20:19-31 and\u00a0Acts 5:27ff<\/span><\/p>\n

By all rights, I should have a good Easter joke for you on this Sunday known among our eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters as Hilarity Sunday.\u00a0 Alas, all I have to offer is this seasoned joke more appropriate to Lent.<\/p>\n

It seems that Friday night after work during the season of Lent, \u00a0Bubba would fire up his outdoor grill \u00a0and cook a venison steak.\u00a0 But, all of Bubba’s neighbors were \u00a0Catholic.\u00a0 And since it was Lent, they were forbidden in those days from eating meat on \u00a0Friday. \u00a0The delicious aroma from the grilled venison \u00a0steaks was causing such a problem for the Catholic faithful that they finally \u00a0talked to their priest.\u00a0\u00a0 And so the Priest came to \u00a0visit Bubba, and suggested that he become Catholic. \u00a0After several \u00a0classes and much study, Bubba attended Mass…and as the \u00a0priest \u00a0sprinkled holy water over him, he said, ‘You were born a Baptist, \u00a0and raised a \u00a0Baptist, but now you are a Catholic.<\/p>\n

Bubba’s neighbors \u00a0were greatly relieved, until Friday night arrived, and \u00a0the wonderful aroma of \u00a0grilled venison filled the neighborhood.\u00a0 The Priest \u00a0was called immediately by the neighbors, and, as he rushed into Bubba’s yard, \u00a0clutching a rosary and prepared to scold him, he stopped and watched in \u00a0amazement. \u00a0There stood Bubba, clutching a small bottle \u00a0of holy water which he carefully sprinkled over the grilling meat and chanted:\u00a0 \u201cYou wuz born a deer, you wuz raised a deer, \u00a0but now you is a catfish.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not without forethought that I retell this old joke:\u00a0 for if you think back to the two passages of scripture that we read this morning, putting them alongside one another, it is almost as if we are talking about two entirely groups of people:\u00a0\u00a0 in John\u2019s Gospel, the followers of Jesus in the first week after the crucifixion and first experience of the resurrection are still hiding behind closed doors; and in the Acts account, which might have been just barely 2-3 months later, we find Peter and the apostles standing without any fear at all in the same court where Jesus had been tried, before being passed on to Pilate.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like the transformation of venison to catfish in the joke.\u00a0 They are not the same critters, and in less than 3 months time they have moved from hiding in fear to standing boldly in the same chamber where Jesus had been tried by the Sanhedrin, and confronting those authorities with what they had done:\u00a0 YOU HAD JESUS KILLED BY HANGING HIM ON A TREE.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 That took some gumption, as my mother used to say about people who were willing to stand for something.\u00a0 Fear, clearly, had been replaced by something else:\u00a0 \u00a0by courage (a word that means, literally, a strong heart), so\u00a0 by courage, yes; but more obviously, by faith\u2014not belief, but absolute trust in the God whose love they had seen in the flesh and who was revealed in the living Jesus and the risen Christ.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s \u00a0Gospel reading for the 8th<\/sup> day following Easter Sunday,\u00a0 we read that the disciples didn\u2019t recognize Jesus the first time he said, \u201cPeace be unto you.\u201d\u00a0 Only when he showed them his hands and his side did they rejoice.<\/p>\n

In other words, the reception of the resurrected Christ comes slowly even to those most devoted to him.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0I love the words at the end of this Gospel reading\u00a0 from Jesus:\u00a0 \u201cBlessed are those who have not seen and yet have come<\/span> to believe.\u201d <\/em> Belief does not happen in one fell swoop.\u00a0 It has to come to us over time, in time, in communities, as I said last week, of remembrance.<\/p>\n

The central character in the Gospel reading is Thomas, whom we often hear called \u201cthe doubter.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Apparently Peter, James and John, the three disciples closest to Jesus were still in hiding.\u00a0 Only Thomas, it seems, had the courage to go out from the hiding place in that first week after all those stunning and terrible events.\u00a0\u00a0 But John\u2019s Gospel calls Thomas by another name, \u201cdidymus\u201d \u00a0which also means, \u201cthe twin\u201d.<\/p>\n

Frederick Buecher, who was one of Mildred Buster\u2019s son\u2019s teachers in prep school, and a wonderful writer, has a beautiful sermon on this text, in which he confesses that \u201c\u2026if you want to know who the other twin is, I can tell you.\u00a0 I am the other twin, and unless I miss my guess, so are you.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 We, like Thomas, want the facts, please.\u00a0 Among all the disciples, Thomas is presented to us as the one with the most inquisitive and challenging mind.\u00a0 Bill Coffin often said that the \u201cprimary religious task these days it to try to think straight.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 And that means to dig deeply in our thinking, in our efforts to comprehend the Easter faith; to allow, as Coffin\u2019s famed predecessor at Riverside Church, Harry Emerson Fosdick, once said ourselves \u201cto doubt until we can doubt our doubt.\u201d\u00a0 We should<\/span> see ourselves as twins of the apostle Thomas.<\/p>\n

Frederick Buechner goes on to say in that sermon that \u201c\u2026for Thomas, perhaps it was the first time that he saw not just \u2018the fact<\/span> of Jesus\u2019 but the \u2018truth<\/span> of Jesus and the truth of who Jesus was for him.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cMy Lord, and my God,\u201d Thomas exclaims when he, who had been bold enough to leave the hiding place and so had missed the first experience of the disciples with the risen Christ, meets the one whose pierced hands and side he wishes to see and to touch.<\/p>\n

Only with a mind that is thinking straight, as Bill Coffin suggested, does Thomas, or do we, come to see not just the fact of Jesus but the truth of Jesus.\u00a0 Or as Buechner says, we begin to see with \u201cour hearts\u201d<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cTo see him with the heart,\u201d Buechner says, \u201c is to know that in the long run his kind of life is the only life worth living.\u00a0 To see him with the heart is not only to believe in him but, little by little, to become bearers to each other of his healing life until we finally become healed and whole and alive within ourselves.\u00a0 To see him with the heart is to take heart, to grow true hearts, brave hearts, at last.\u201d\u00a0 [Buechner, Frederick.\u00a0 Secrets in the Dark:\u00a0 A Life in Sermons]<\/em><\/p>\n

Fear tends to make cowards of us, and so imprisons us behind whatever closed off walls we try to hide behind.\u00a0 In the name of God, I find too much of the Church today to be absolutely appalling, and certainly not very appealing:\u00a0 Too often, it was my experience with denominations working together in the Council of Churches that the Church tries to be the least offensive to the least committed, so that we bring the whole gospel down to the least common denominator that asks nothing of us, and, in the end, gives us nothing either that could legitimately be called good news.\u00a0 No wonder the whole enterprise of institutional church life is so disheartened these days.<\/p>\n

In contrast to this milk-toast, fear- proscribed (for that is what it really is\u2014fear of being different, of having to put forth some energy, of having to make a stand), kind of religion, the story in Luke\u2019s book of the Acts of the Apostles shows us people whose lives have been transformed to the extent that they will say:\u00a0 \u201cwe must obey God rather than any human authority.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Their testimony to the Sanhedrin, which was probably composed of both Saduccees (who did NOT believe in resurrection, which, by the way, is not something Christians invented but has been part of Jewish tradition for long before Jesus, and who could appropriately be correlated with our modern day biblical literalists) and the Pharisees, who DID believe in resurrection of God\u2019s faithful at the \u201cend of the age\u201d, was that\u00a0 God has turned hideous death into a gift for the \u201crestoration for<\/span> Israel.\u201d\u00a0 (Note that the phrase is not \u201crestoration OF Israel\u201d, as if they have somehow gotten cut off, as too many Christians even today seem to believe, so justifying their terrible persecution throughout the centuries.)\u00a0\u00a0 But this gift of Jesus and his death and his rising is for<\/span> Israel.<\/p>\n

It is Gamaliel, the great rabbi of the Pharisees, who argues not as a censorious legalist but as a warm and compassionate teacher who knows enough of the ways of God to know that God continually surprises God\u2019s people by moving beyond their limited horizons.\u00a0 \u201cIf this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail;\u00a0 but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them\u2014in that case you may even be found fighting against God!\u201d<\/p>\n

In our own time,\u00a0\u00a0 Gamaliel\u2019s teaching might be beneficial.\u00a0 There are so many divisions in the life of the church\u2014over homosexuality, over who can be ordained and who cannot, over church state separation, over war, not to mention the\u00a0 divisions in our world, and American society with its growing incivility and insipid social Darwinism, especially amongst those who most deny Darwin\u2019s scientific achievements, that argues for the survival of the fittest in society. \u00a0\u00a0God forbid that we as a society should create a safety net for the most vulnerable of our fellow human beings.\u00a0 We could use a little \u201cwait and see\u201d if various matters are \u201cof God\u201d or not, before we rush to close doors and lock them up.<\/p>\n

But more beneficial would be the gumption, the believing heart to live, as Jesus did, as the Disciples who came to believe, and as countless Christians across the ages gradually came to believe and trust, knowing in our heart of hearts that his kind of life is the only life worth living.\u00a0 Friends, we aren\u2019t called to huddle behind our closed doors.\u00a0 A handful of people, fewer in number than we are today, turned this world upside down. If we give our obedience to the nice polite safe ways of people who never rock the boat, we are, as Paul says, most to be pitied.\u00a0 Easter tells us that\u00a0 we are called to be witnesses to resurrection, to the ways in which God moves us from death to fullness of life. \u00a0And by golly, it\u2019s time to change from being God\u2019s little lost lambs to becoming the lion-hearted people, like Peter in front of the Sanhedrin, that God and our world needs for restoration.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

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Texts:\u00a0 John 20:19-31 and\u00a0Acts 5:27ff By all rights, I should have a good Easter joke for you on this Sunday known among our eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters as Hilarity Sunday.\u00a0 Alas, all I have to offer is this seasoned<\/p>\n

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