The first reading was from Acts 4:32-35.
The holy gospel according to John (20:19-31)
19When
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 Judeans,
Jesus
came and stood among them and said,
“Peace be with you.”
20After
he said this,
he
showed them his hands and his side.
Then
the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
21Jesus
said to them again,
“Peace be with you.
As
the Father has sent me,
so
I send you.”
22When
he had said this,
he
breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive
the Holy Spirit.
23If
you forgive the sins of any,
they
are forgiven them;
if
you retain the sins of any,
they are retained.”
24But
Thomas (who was called the Twin),
one
of the twelve,
was
not with them when Jesus came.
25So
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.”
26A
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.”
27Then
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.”
28Thomas
answered him,
“My
Lord and my God!”
29Jesus
said to him,
“Have
you believed because you have seen me?
Blessed
are those who have not seen
and
yet have come to believe.”
30Now
Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples,
which
are not written in this book.
31But
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.
The gospel of the lord.
-----
Today is our first post-resurrection encounter with Christ,
our crucified and risen lord. In
this encounter, we find Jesus not whole and without scar or wound or
blemish. Instead we find Jesus
wounded, his feet and hands and side not festering, perhaps, but also not
healed. Never to heal. Jesus is a Christ who bares his
wounds.
If he were alive and
living among us, he would be called disabled, handicapped. The pain of trying to walk on feet that
have been pierced, would put him in a wheelchair, dependent on others, to say
nothing of his hands and side.
Even as we proclaim Christ as the crucified one, we want him to be
healthy, independent, and able-bodied in the resurrection. But that is not the Jesus we encounter
today in John.
We encounter a Jesus whose body has been broken by the
powers of the world in the crucifixion and who is still our Resurrected
One. If Jesus is not an argument
for changing our language from disabled to differently abled, then…well, we’ll
just have to rely on the scientist Stephen Hawking, local former paralympic
athelete Tanja Kari, and others to do that.
Christ crucified and risen, categorized as disabled,
gives us new ways to understand the world and our place in it—not a place of
total independence and freedom from obligation, but instead freedom as the
early church in Acts lived it out.
Freedom to depend on each other.
Our
reading from Acts reports, “32Now the whole group of those who
believed were of one heart and soul,
and no one claimed private ownership of
any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common….34There
was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses
sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. 35They laid it
at the apostles’ feet, and it was
distributed to each as any had need.”
Our freedom in the resurrection is freedom to depend on each
other, freedom to not have it all together. And freedom to hold in common that which we hold nearest and
dearest, that which pulls our emotions most strongly. Those things that stress you most—money, family, politics,
work—are not yours alone. They are
ours to hold together, ours to share together.
Our children at Christ the King are all of ours. We all get to care for them and engage with
them in the life of faith. We get
to share with them and learn from them the joys of generosity and giving. And the children get to share with the
grown ups, to teach grown ups about faith and generosity.
Together we all get to share the connections we have with
those in the wider world—with folks who are sick, who have lost hair because of
chemo or other sicknesses; with the families who find shelter through Family
Promise, or grief support through The Sharing Place.
In the resurrection, our wounded Christ, our disabled or
differently-abled Christ connects us in relationships of mutual
dependence. We all have needs and
we all have gifts to share. We all
have different abilities. Christ
frees us to be open about our needs and
our gifts, to engage with each other in a spirit of generosity and mutuality.
Not all of us have the direct communication skills of
newborns. Somewhere along the way,
as we learned to talk, most of us also learned to be “independent,” to not
share our needs or weaknesses with others. But our Christ shares his wounds with us—so much so that
Thomas is invited to thrust his finger and hands in Jesus’ hands and side.
But how do we do that?
How do we hold this all “in common”? First by sharing. In small groups, talk about: How you care for others. How you recognize your connection to
“each as any has need.” How you
could share with another today or this week.
If you’re feeling brave, I invite you to share with the
whole group what you can share.
How your generosity might connect us all together.
And now, holding it all in common is not just about your gifts
and abilities. How do you
recognize your own need? How do
you make it known? In small
groups, share: what is a need that you have?
If you’re feeling brave, I invite you to share with the
whole group what need(s) you have.
This is the resurrection life. It is a life of mutuality, of interdependence and of
different abilities. God gives us
each different abilities, we all have needs as well as gifts to share. And we get to hold them all in
common with the whole of creation.
Thanks be to God.
1 comment:
It was a bold move to allow comments in the context of the sermon, but the powerful erasure of dominant ableist narratives of a resurrected Christ who no longer has human needs or experiences brings God's good news back to God's people who struggle with the pain of bodies that don't move like we'd like, or bodies that get tired sooner than we'd like, or bodies that maybe just are different than others, and make people uncomfortable. Just as Jesus did before and after resurrection.
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