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Mary Magdalene was the first person to whom the risen Lord appeared after his resurrection. She was the first because she was there, present at the empty tomb on the morning of Easter Day, while the others were not. Where were all the others? Where were all the disciples? Three of the Gospels remind us, as well, that it was only Mary and some other women who were with Jesus at the Cross when he died. All the others had fled after Jesus had been taken to Golgotha to be crucified. The evangelist John tells us that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” was also at the Cross with Mary, but he is the only one to say so. And in none of the Gospels is there any mention of Peter or James or John or Thomas or Matthew, or any of the others, as having followed Jesus all the way to the Cross and to his tomb. What happened to them? What happened to Thomas? Earlier, at the time of Lazarus’ death, Jesus told the disciples that he must go back to Judea. Most of the disciples had argued with him. “But, Master,” they said, “the last time we were there, they tried to stone you. We can’t go back there!” But Thomas had called for courage. “Come on,” he said, “let us also go, that we may die with him.” But Thomas wasn’t at the Cross to die with Jesus, or even at the empty tomb. What happened to Thomas between his call to courage and Calvary? And what happened to the disciples James and John? Back there on the road they had wanted Jesus to give them places of honor when he came into his kingdom. Jesus had told them that he would have to go to Jerusalem, and be crucified and killed. He told them that they didn’t know what they were asking when they asked for places at his right hand and his left. “Can you be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” Jesus asked. And James and John had boldly put themselves forward as faithful disciples. “We can!” they claimed. “We’ll be there!” But they weren’t there, either at the Cross or at the empty tomb. What happened to them? And just as recently as last Thursday night, on Maundy Thursday, Jesus had told his disciples that they would all desert him. Not only Judas, but every one of them. “This very night you will all fall away on account of me,” he said. But only hours before he would hear the cock crow, Peter had said, “Even if all fall away, I will not. Even if I have to die with you, Jesus, I will never disown you.” “And all the others said the same,” says Mark. But Peter wasn’t there either. It’s clear that Jesus knew his friends better than they knew themselves, because, when push came to shove, they all denied him. Every one of them fell away when the soldiers arrived. And in today’s Gospel we find them locked in a room. On the very evening of the Resurrection we find them hiding in fear, afraid that even now the authorities might come to take them all away to be arrested and killed as friends of Jesus, crucified as accomplices to insurrection or blasphemy. “Why, of all the possible people, was it Mary Magdalene, one of the last and the least and the lost of the world, to whom the risen Christ first appeared?” The answer is that she was there. And the question for the evening of Easter Day, now that resurrection has happened, is: Where are we? Well, we are here. We are at church, at Jesus’ church. But what is church, this place where we are? The Church is the community of Jesus, we say, the Body of Christ. We are those who have heard Mary’s news, the news that Jesus is not dead, but lives. The Church are those who call Jesus Lord. But what does this mean? At every football game we see someone hold up a large sign that reads, “John 3:16.” “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Certainly, to proclaim this Easter truth is church. But at how many football games do we see someone hold up a sign proclaiming “Mark 8:34,” the truth Jesus tried to teach the disciples shortly before the Resurrection? “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Surely, this is Easter truth as well, as much a part of church as John 3:16. We often get very confused about church. The Church gathers in all kinds of circumstances. There is, for example, no common architecture. Some churches seem to have everything: stained glass windows, grand pipe organs with multiple ranks, choirs with scores of professionally trained voices, wonderful prayer books and eloquent preachers. Still other churches are simple wood shelters where you have to look for beauty in the people, rather than on the walls or in the windows. There are churches where there is no choir at all, neither organ nor preacher, and where the few who gather wait simply and quietly for the leading of the Spirit. Some insist that what’s most important in a church are friendly people. Others, like one church in Houston, have invested loads of money in a number of bowling alleys, a swimming pool, and a large-screen closed-circuit TV. Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral says that the most important thing for a church to have is a huge parking lot, that a church without plenty of parking places is a church in need. One big church not far from here claims that church is the place where you can learn to save your marriage, improve your sex life, manage your money, and relieve the pain and pressure of life – that that’s what church and the Bible are all about. But what is it, bottom line, that makes us all church? What is it that we all have in common, that thing which binds us hearers of the good news of Easter together as one body? John 3:16? Mark 8:34? Well, in John’s Gospel today, on the evening of Easter Day, we find Jesus’ church gathering for the first time after his resurrection. It is church stripped bare. All nonessentials are absent. It is church with no organ, no choir, not even an old upright piano. There is no swimming pool, no pulpit or altar, no pastor, no plan, no mission, no conviction, no nothing. Not even any hope. It is the first miserable little congregation ever to take upon itself the name “church.” It is the personal friends of Jesus, a small, scared, disheartened, defensive little group, hiding behind locked doors, cowering like frightened animals, hoping no one in town will discover they are there. “What kind of advertisement might this church put in the Saturday paper to attract members?” Tom Long asks. “The friendly church where everyone is welcome”? Hardly. “The church with a warm heart and a bold mission”? Forget it. “This,” Long says, “is the church of sweaty palms and shaky knees.” Here is church with absolutely nothing going for it except the presence and love of the risen Christ, who, despite the locked doors and locked hearts, stands among the beaten and dispirited disciples and gives them his Spirit and his peace. Isn’t this every church, stripped down to the essentials? John shows us the church in the wake of the Resurrection, a group of people, like ourselves, who have just heard the stunning news of Easter. It is church stripped of parking lots, vestry plans and commissions, pulpits and preachers, organs and choirs, budgets, bowling alleys, and gorgeous windows. It’s just a huddle of confused, timid, cowering, fearful failures to follow Jesus. And John remembers how we got here today. Just three days ago, one of us, Judas, used the kiss of peace, a sign of friendship, to tip off the police about Jesus. Another, Peter, saved his own skin by denying he had ever laid eyes on his best friend. The rest of us all scattered in fear, abandoning every principle we had promised to live by, leaving Jesus to a kangaroo court that declared him guilty of a crime he didn’t commit and that executed him in one of the most hideous ways possible. That was us, the friends of Jesus, just three days ago on Friday. And then early this morning Mary Magdalene and some other women went to Jesus’ tomb. They went to anoint the body of their friend, which is more than we men had the guts to do. And when they arrived at the tomb, they found it empty. “You are looking for Jesus?” a young man near the tomb asks. “Don’t be afraid. He’s not here. He is risen. Go and tell Peter, and the others, that he wants to see them again.” Considering Good Friday, is that news we would welcome? So here we are later the same day, a pitiful huddle of shameful, frightened, timid souls, locked up in fear, our only hope that no one else in town will find us. But our friend, the one we betrayed, the one we denied and handed over to be crucified just three days ago, appears among us and says, "Peace. Peace be with you.” It is, as John Claypool says, the greatest miracle of Easter. Not that God raised Jesus from the dead, but that after all we did to Jesus on Good Friday, God sent his own beloved Son back to us. John 3:16. The greatest miracle of Easter was not that God raised Jesus from the dead. That was a piece of cake for the One who created the world out of nothing in the first place. The greatest miracle of Easter is that Jesus wants to see us again after Good Friday, and wants to give us spirit again, wants to offer us his peace. “Peace be with you,” he says a second time. And he breathes on us and says, “Now I want you to go out and do for others what I do for you.” Mark 8:34 again. And our pitiful huddle of shameful, frightened, timid souls becomes church. All our beautiful trappings and spiritual pretense do not make us church. The essence of church is the presence of the wounded, living Lord, the presence of the One we betrayed, denied, and crucified, who comes reconciling us to himself and to God, forgiving us despite all that we have done to him. The essence of church is the presence of the One who gives us frightened, timid souls the spirit and ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation after the Resurrection that he had been trying to give us all along on the road. Mark 8:34, again. John Paul II, now of blessed memory, was never more the Vicar of Christ than when, on behalf of us all, he asked forgiveness from our brothers and sisters of other faiths for the wrongs Christians have done to Jews and others in the name of Christ. Such reconciliation is of the essence of church, of the essence of the peace of Christ. All life is gift, even church. Even worship. Even the ministries we seek to do in Christ’s Name are gifts. And if we do not acknowledge this, we’re likely to become very confused about church. “It is Christ’s love that compels us,” says St. Paul, because we are convinced that Christ died for us to give us new life. We are a new creation, and it is all a gift from God, “who reconciled us to himself in Christ, not counting our sins against us. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” This is another one for the football games, and for church: 2 Corinthians 5:18. Those of us who prepare for our parish worship each week have learned this – that worship itself is gift. We carefully select every hymn coordinated to the texts for the day. We prepare bulletins we hope will correctly tell everyone “where we are” in the service. We spend hours every week preparing sermons we hope will be spiritually edifying. But we know that despite all our careful planning, worship – real worship, the “My-Lord-and-my-God” kind of worship of Thomas – is not something we can create. It is gift, pure and simple. It is God himself giving us his Spirit again, and giving us the ministry of reconciliation, because he has forgiven us. In fact, I wonder sometimes if our laborious planning, all our selecting and evaluating, isn’t perhaps just another form of the disciples’ locked doors, another way of trying to keep things fixed, tied down, under control, another form of fear and death. Sometimes I wonder if we don’t create programs and activities as a way of avoiding the presence of the God of John 3:16 and Mark 8:34. But sometimes – Who knows? Maybe today will be such a time – sometimes by the grace of God, the living Lord slips through our closed doors and locked hearts through all the fear and pretense and death, and there is worship, real worship, worship not of our own creation, but worship as gift, worship as peace, worship as forgiveness and reconciliation. And we take off our shoes, and by the grace of God we say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God,” and we become church. When you come right down to it, isn’t the peace which the forgiving Jesus gives us the only thing we have to offer as church that is unique? “Peace be with you.” Not just peace in Iraq and on the West Bank, but the peace of God reconciling you with the person next to you in the pew, and her with you, peace between someone we have denied or betrayed or offended and ourselves, the deniers, the betrayers, the offenders. It is gift, that peace that passes all understanding, the gift of the presence of the One we betrayed on Thursday and crucified on Friday. It is his presence here with us, stripped of all our pretenses, locked in fear in the wake of Mary’s news. Isn’t this Church stripped to its essentials? Yes, John 3:16. But also Mark 8:34 and 2 Corinthians 5:18 – that anyone who would follow Jesus must take up his cross and follow. Follow all the way to the Cross and all the way to the empty tomb, and follow beyond that to the fellowship of fearful people still reeling from the facts of Good Friday and the news of Easter, there to offer to others the peace and reconciliation that Easter brings. Isn’t this what all our beautiful trappings and spiritual exercises and parish plans and commissions and budgets and worship really come down to, if they are anything at all? Church is for reminding us of this truth. Whether it’s in a grand cathedral or in a simple country church, whether it’s with the “smells and bells” of a high solemn mass or the quietness of a Quaker meeting, church is for reminding us who we are, and whose we are. Church – the “My-Lord-and-my-God” kind of worship of Thomas – is a reminder that life is more than all the plans and houses of straw we build. Church, at its root, is like all life. It is gift, pure and simple, because it is centered on and issues from the One we denied, but who, through his reconciling love for us, comes to us through the locked doors of all our fears and makes it possible for us to forgive each other. Part of the gift, of course, is the presence of Christ himself, the presence of the One we seek to worship on this Second Sunday of Easter, when we are still trying to come to terms with Mary Magdalene’s stunning news. But another part of the gift is the people we have to worship with. “You can choose your friends,” Pastor Rich Mayfield reminds his Lutheran congregation in Dillon, “but you can’t choose your family. And friends, this is your family. Although we seem a decent group,” he adds, “all of us are aware that there are folk seated here we just as soon weren’t. But we don’t have any choice. It was the Holy Spirit who brought them here, the same as you and me.” I suspect that's true of us as well, here at Our Saviour Parish. The same Holy Spirit who brought Thomas to that first pitiful congregation, the same Holy Spirit who brings you and me here today seeking worship, seeking God today, the same Holy Spirit who brings Jesus here today, brought all the others as well, that we might be reconciled to one another as God has reconciled us all to himself, through Christ. That's church, the greatest miracle of Easter. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |