Jesus gives grace and calls us to the way of salvation - 6th after pentecost

The holy gospel according to Luke (9:51-62)

⁵¹When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up,

       he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

       ⁵²And he sent messengers ahead of him.

              On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him;

                     ⁵³but they did not receive him,

                            because his face was set toward Jerusalem.

                            ⁵⁴When his disciples James and John saw it, they said,

                                   “Lord, do you want us to command fire

                                          to come down from heaven and consume them?”

                            ⁵⁵But Jesus turned and rebuked them.

                                   ⁵⁶Then they went on to another village.

⁵⁷As they were going along the road, someone said to him,

       “I will follow you wherever you go.”

⁵⁸And Jesus said to him,

       “Foxes have holes,

       and birds of the air have nests;

              but the Son of Humanity has nowhere to lay his head.”

⁵⁹To another Jesus said,

       “Follow me.”

       But he said,

              “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

              ⁶⁰But Jesus said to him,

                     “Let the dead bury their own dead;

                            but as for you,

                                   go and proclaim the reign of God.”

⁶¹Another said,

       “I will follow you, Lord;

              but let me first say farewell to those at my home.”

       ⁶²Jesus said to him,

              “No one who puts a hand to the plow

                     and looks back

                            is fit for the reign of God.”

The gospel of the Lord.

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Today’s Jesus is all about the tough love!  I might even go so far as to question his family values—no burying parents or even saying good-bye to family?  He just takes off and expects everybody else to drop everything and hop on board.  This doesn’t seem like the same Jesus who cast out the demons called Legion last week.

And in some ways he’s not the same.  We’ve jumped from last week’s healing of the Gerasene man with the demons past Jesus’ transfiguration—the turning point in his ministry at which he, as we hear reiterated today, sets his face to Jerusalem.

In the first half of Luke, Jesus gathers his followers and disciples and they journey with him, witnessing the healing and wholeness he creates for individuals and communities, including feeding over 5000 people!  This is the hope and trust we have in Jesus, the love and forgiveness we receive freely from Jesus.

But now, in the second half of Luke, his call to follow him is not so easy.  Now Jesus is going to confront the powerful in Jerusalem.  Now following Jesus will not be for the faint of heart.

Jesus has “set his face to go to Jerusalem” and he is on a mission; nothing will stop him.  He sends folks ahead to prepare the way and the village of Samaritans doesn’t receive him.  Yet he is bound and determined and keeps going as the path is clearer without that stop.

James and John, also known as the sons of Thunder, don’t quite see eye to eye with Jesus on this.  They are as true to their name as they are off-base on their response.  They ask Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 

Where the village that doesn’t receive him fails, this woefully misguided question does succeed in stopping Jesus in his tracks.  He turns and rebukes these sons of Thunder.  Bringing fire down on this village that has cleared the path for his continued journey doesn’t fit with Jesus’ mission.  Bringing down any violent condemnation doesn’t fit with God’s plan.

Even as Jesus is headed to Jerusalem to call the powerful to account, he is not going to condemn them, but to call them to repentance, to turn from their ways that lead not to life but to death.

Jesus’ road is a particular road and while he still focuses on compassion for the marginalized and outcast, Jesus is clearer in the challenge those of us with power and privilege will face in following him.  Because, there is joy and deep meaning to be found in following Jesus, and there is sacrifice and discomfort. 

Part of the shift in Jesus’ focus is a reflection of the difference between receiving God’s forgiveness and true salvation, which goes deeper.  The first half of Luke is the embodiment of God’s grace.  Just as Jesus moves about bringing healing and wholeness to those with and without the faith to ask, God’s forgiveness and love is free to all of us.  That’s why it’s called grace.  It’s the easy part of this life of faith, because it is entirely dependent on God, not us.  It is the thing that pulls us and the other disciples into following Jesus, realizing the healing and wholeness that he brings.

Salvation is a different step along the journey of faith and, like Jesus in today’s gospel, it is both more urgent and more difficult for many of us.  Rev. Lura N. Groen describes salvation, stating, “salvation is about living in right and good and loving relationship with God, your human siblings, and all creation, in a joyful, whole, holy relationship. And if we don't do the work, it is literally, functionally impossible to be in that relationship.”

Salvation, especially as we experience it in the gospel of Luke, goes deeper and happens right now—here on this earth in each moment.  And it happens in community.  Salvation has to do with how we are in relationship with each other and we can’t be in right relationship with each other when our actions and inactions harm others.

As M encouraged us a couple weeks ago, we need to examine our place in the world, to question if we love the systems and institutions we are a part of more than the neighbor whom Jesus calls us to love.  As we follow Jesus we also question the systems set up in this culture, economic, political, and social ones.  Jesus calls us also to question whether these systems help care for the oppressed and marginalized or further oppress and marginalize those we’ve deemed as “other.”

Rev. Groen points out that “… [we] won't experience true salvation without repenting of [our] racism and sexism, without being forgiven, without the work of transforming [our] heart and [our] life.”

It is no simple task.  Salvation requires our participation and our self-examination.  When we need our hair cut, do we have any trouble finding someone who knows how to handle our hair?  Like M reflected, when we go to a store, are we treated with more respect and less suspicion than we would if our skin were darker or we spoke another language?  When we are out with our loved ones, do we feel anxious or hesitant about holding their hand as some still do in today’s culture?  When we walk down the street in a city, do we think about if how we are dressed will be used as an excuse for harassment?  When we enter a building, does it have a ramp for wheelchair access? These are some of the questions raised when we follow Jesus and seek salvation.

In today’s gospel, Jesus names his own reality as one who is oppressed.  As he says so eloquently in today’s gospel, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Humanity has nowhere to lay his head.”  When we take a new step in faith, we step toward the oppressed Christ who is crucified in all those who are oppressed and marginalized throughout the world. 

And in this process, the Holy Spirit frees us from the façade of privilege that we carry.  We no longer have to be perfectly put together.  We no longer have to hold our emotions stoically inside.  In calling us to follow as Jesus’ “face [is] set toward Jerusalem,” Jesus gives us the opportunity to stop trying to look good, to stop putting store in what our culture demands of us, and instead Jesus invites us to risk being in relationship with those different from us, to risk our own sense of security, and to risk messing up—being imperfect and awkward.

As we as a community of faith set our faces to the farms this summer, Jesus invites us as well into the risk of broken Spanish, of attempts to communicate and build relationships, of wondering what it is like to live in a country with a language different from the one we grew up with, of sharing food and corn hole competitions, even when we mix up words like hombres y hombros—men and shoulders.  And in all of this Jesus is already on the farms with the folks there, waiting for us to arrive and walking with us on the way.

Jesus has set his face to Jerusalem, his mission is clear, his love and forgiveness abounds for each of us, and his call is to follow him. 

To follow Jesus into a sometimes scary place of vulnerability, into a difficult way of non-violence, resisting our urges to demonize others, trusting that even in messing up we are growing in relationship with our neighbors and through those relationships, growing also with God. 

Jesus’ way is difficult and it is the way of life.  Jesus leads the way and accompanies us throughout, so that we are never left behind or alone.

Thanks be to God.

Jesus meets us where we're at: Easter 2c

The other reading I reference is Revelation 1:4-8.

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 Jesus’ 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 said to Jesus,

                  “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.

-----

Thomas is one of my favorite disciples.  One of the things I love about Thomas comes from a paper I wrote in seminary.  I was writing a paper using disability theology, which is theology specifically from the perspective of folks who our dominant culture considers disabled.  I went in looking at Jesus as disabled, with his wounds from the cross as part of the whole resurrected Christ and what I found was that Thomas is blind!  I think that Thomas was blind and that this is a bigger deal for us today than it seemed to be for Thomas and the other disciples back then.

You see, Thomas, who is called the twin—perhaps because he is usually accompanied by someone to help him navigate busy, bustling streets—is the disciple who is: a-braver than all the rest, b-more foolhardy than all the rest, or c-unlucky enough to draw the short stick when the disciples ran out of their supply of food.  Whatever the case, on that first day of the week Thomas was the one disciple not inside the doors, which were “locked for fear of the Judeans.”

In this resurrection account in John, Peter and the Beloved Disciple have already returned from scoping out the tomb that morning when Mary announced the body was missing, and now they believe… without understanding.  Mary has returned again since then to announce that she has “seen the Lord.”  And yet the disciples remain locked up and fearful. 

Except Thomas who, even if he is afraid, goes out into the world anyway.  And while Thomas is out, Jesus comes into the disciples’ locked room, sneaking through the cracks and crevices of their fear-filled, locked up “no” to breathe on them “Peace be with you.” 

The disciples have locked the doors, shut themselves in against a scary and dangerous world out there.  Yet, through the cracks in the walls, under the door, even the cracks in the disciples’ clear “no,” Jesus meets them where they’re at.  Even in their fear and lack of understanding Jesus shows them the wounds that make Jesus whole.  And then the disciples recognize their Lord.

When Thomas returns, it is finally the disciples’ turn to proclaim the resurrection.  “We have seen the Lord” they teasingly announce to the one whose eyes do not see, the one who was not there, the one who faced his own fear outside their safely locked room.  Thomas responds with their language.  Stating his own, similar need, Thomas says “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 also needs to “see”—which is for him, to touch and feel, in order to believe.

So the next week, with the doors still closed, Jesus comes again.  This time Thomas is with the other disciples and it would be easy to believe that Jesus comes just for Thomas.  It would be easy to believe, that is,          if the disciples weren’t still in the same room with the doors shut up against the fearful outside world. Because the truth is: the disciples probably still need this just as much or more than Thomas.  And they need Thomas with them to venture out into the world.

And so Jesus comes again breathing his “Peace be with you” to them.  Jesus comes to Thomas and gives him the woundedness still present in the resurrected Christ, saying “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.” Because for Thomas who is blind, to touch is to see.  To touch is to know, that this is “the Alpha and the Omega”—this is the everything—from Alpha to Omega, from before the beginning of all time to past the end of it.  Jesus is “the Almighty.”

And from those moments of clarity—of deep, soul-shattering clarity—comes the ultimate confession as Thomas replies “My Lord and my God!”  Jesus comes to the disciples again and again.  Jesus meets Thomas and all the others where they are, meeting them in the struggle for faith, in the struggle with grief.

The resurrection comes with new life and hope, certainly, and it also comes in the midst of grief—over a leader lost and of a leader who is not who they thought—one who leads differently.  They grieve the unmet expectations, of a mighty and powerful overthrow, expectations the disciples hadn’t realized existed until those expectations died on the cross.

The resurrection comes with new life and Jesus breaks in through the cracks and crevices of our fear and our “no”s to breathe Jesus’ “Peace be with you.”  The one who covers all time: present, past, and future comes with the slow quiet breath of “Peace be with you.” 

Jesus meets Mary at the tomb, calling her “Mary!” and naming her into the resurrection. 

                                   

Jesus meets the disbelieving disciples, locked in their fear, breathing “Peace be with you” and forgiveness of sins. 

And Jesus meets them again when nothing seems to have changed except that Thomas is with them this time.  And Jesus again breathes “Peace be with you” and reaches out to Thomas, joining Thomas in physical sight, so that Thomas, feeling Jesus’ broken body—the physical reality of the crucifixion as a part of this whole Resurrected one, Thomas can then make the great confession “My Lord and my God!”

And Jesus comes again and again to us today.  Jesus’ broken body feeds us, Jesus’ blood of the new covenant, the cup of salvation, fills us with joy.  Today Jesus comes to us and we taste and feel the goodness of our Lord and our God.  Again and again Jesus meets us where we are at, in our hunger and thirst, in our doubts and disbeliefs.  Jesus joins us.

Because Christ is risen!  Christ is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!

christ crucified and resurrected frees us for interdependence: 2nd of easter

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.