11 April 2010
Second Sunday of Easter, 11 April 2010
Jesus Christ is Risen, Allelulia
He is risen indeed, Alleluia
What a wonderful celebration of Holy Week we have just had! The great story of the passion and resurrection was retold in many ways all over the world and here at Stafford I think we did a pretty good job. As my first Easter here, it was a great privilege to travel the journey with this community and I was struck by the way that the contributions of so many people come together... I think that is the strongest memory that stays with me... ordinary people with an ordinary array of gifts and talents ... and let's be honest... quirks and frailties... working together to create something alive and moving.
We all have our memories of this Easter... whether they are of the services here or of events that happened in your lives outside these walls... I'm wondering what touched you? Maybe you could identify a God moment for you over that time... an encounter with the Easter story that was highlighted for you... an experience of worship or family or friends or nature or quiet or joy that spoke to you of something of the power of this time...?
Is anyone brave enough to share one of those? Now some people will hate this... a wet behind the ears deacon with a roving mike but I wonder what God moments are out there?
(Gather some shared experiences from the community)
Well it seems to me that those experiences are pretty much glimpses of Christ... those graced moments when we experience something of the face of God... and of course the church has a technical word for that.. Theophany.. God revealing God's self... Theophany... now that's a word to try and weave into conversation over a cuppa today... Theophany....
The Easter season is full of stories of theophany, testimonies of the appearance and power of God and of people beginning to live lives shaped by the power of Christ and the Good News... their successes... and their failures to get it... like Thomas.
I can relate to Thomas as I suspect many of us can... unfortunately destined to be known for all time as Doubting Thomas... because he comes to his experience of Christ with the eternal questions of the human condition "Where is the proof?".
Thomas is provided with proof but is deeply challenged as Jesus asks and reproves him... and all of us...
"Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
Faith is the free gift of belief that is not built on carefully constructed rational argument or direct personal experience, but belief that accepts the Good News with conviction despite the uncertainty, doubt and fear that are undeniably part of the human condition.
Every now and then I come across people who say to me "I'm not a very good Christian... I have too many questions" or "I'm not too sure about a lot of this stuff" and tell me this as a flaw or problem... and my response is invariably "GOOD!"... Because I don't think this gospel is telling us we should have unquestioning faith. Poor old Thomas often gets held up as the model of what not to do... just believe, don't question... but I think this misses some of the point of Thomas' experience
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."
I think it's safe to say that there is a tone of reproof in Jesus' response to this... but I wonder if the reproof was not so much about the doubt and questions in itself but the reality that Thomas had closed his mind.... he had dug his heels in and taken a position that closed off dialogue with the other disciples... he was not open to hearing the richness of the experiences of others.... after all.. we have heard a range of experiences here today... and there are many people who were not in church or on the beach to see and experience it with them... the only way we can get an insight into the experience of others is to open ourselves up to possibility... and being open to possibility does not stop us asking questions or being unsure about the details... in fact the questions help us to get a deeper sense of what happened... and that is the opposite of an absolutist mindset.
The positive value of an absolutist approach to faith and, well, any form of understanding is that it gives us a firm set of ideas to work with... but the danger is that it closes us to new possibilities, for growing, for learning, for experiencing the story anew... and I think that lies at the core of this story... faith requires an openness to paradox and ambiguity and ability to engage with the grey areas of life... and to me that is the most exciting thing about it.
The Good News of the crucifixion and resurrection is not that there will no longer be hard times or that it ushered in of a new era of certainty for all... the Good News is the promise that God will be there in the ambiguity and paradox, that there is no place that God cannot be found... the fundamental message of Easter we celebrate in this season is that death, darkness, the worst evil that humanity can throw at God, does not win. In the resurrection, Christ enters into the paradox and ambiguities of human existence and transcends and transforms it
My prayer today is that we may become truly people open to the possibilities of the Good News. That we have the courage to let go of our desire for proof, for certainties, for miraculous signs and for rational arguments and risk living as we are called to be... open to the wonder and hope that is Easter... open to seeing the face of Christ in the world around us... open to the glimpses of God we hear in the experiences of others... open to theophany.... open to the reality of the living God.
Jesus Christ is Risen, Allelulia
He is risen indeed, Alleluia
Rev'd Andrew Cooper
St Clement's-on-the-Hill, Stafford
