The Joy of Being Wrong

• Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)
• Revelation 5:11-14
• John 21:1-19
• Psalm 30

Some of my most satisfying moments as a pastor and a priest—or as a husband and a father, for that matter—come when the people around me find a solution to a problem for which I can take no credit.  I might have helped facilitate investigation of the matter, offered some clarifying analysis or fruitful question, but I have held myself back from providing what I think to be the answer, and in the end this proves to be a good thing, when I discover that I had wrong idea.  The insight that comes, the sense of the right direction forward is one I would not have come up with.  And the satisfaction of recognizing it when it comes, the energy I receive from being able to join in to saying “yes, that’s it”, is far greater than what I would have gained by insisting we try it my way.

This is what you might call “The Joy of Being Wrong.” Which is a phrase I got from the title of a book by an English Catholic theologian named James Allison.  I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you read the book, unless you’re in the mood for a good, brisk, philosophical and theological workout, but you don’t really have to, because the title tells you most of what you need to know.  Which is that the joy that is at the heart of the Christian life, the joy that burst with the brilliance of a billion suns from the empty tomb on Easter Day, and still spreads contagiously around the world almost two thousand years later, is the joy of being wrong. 

Of course, the Judeo-Christian sense of being wrong, is more far-reaching and profound than simply not knowing the right solution to a practical problem in the affairs of one’s family or the church.  The subtitle of Allison’s book is “Original Sin through Easter Eyes.”  And it isn’t only Roman Catholics who subscribe to the notion that there is something essentially, you might even say congenitally, off-the-mark in human nature.  “I have been a sinner from my mother’s womb” says Psalm 51.  Orthodox Calvinism teaches the doctrine of “total human depravity,” which is reflected in the General Confession from the original English Book of Common Prayer: “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us.”

This wrongness is not merely psychological, but is manifested in the social world we have made.  The Cross of Christ reveals this.  The powers that rule this world are unmasked on the cross as the powers of sin and death.  It is a world constructed on the victimization of the innocent, on violence and falsehood pretending to be justice and peace.    And this is reflected in the lesser instruments of death we wield against each other daily in our intimate circles—the hardened heart and the cold shoulder, the accusing finger, the sugary lips concealing a poisoned tongue, the deaf ear and the blind eye.   We are wrong when we think that our justifications, be they personal or cultural, religious or political, can make such things pleasing to God.  We are wrong to believe that a world so in thrall to the power of death is a world that can last. 

  

But Christ’s resurrection shows how wrong we also are when imagine we are helpless prisoners of that world, or that our deep-dyed implication in its wrongness is a stain which cannot be removed.  The Easter joy of being wrong is the freedom of seeing that there is no captivity in sin, in self-destructive vice or self-righteous injustice, in death itself, that cannot be broken open by the love and life of God.   The story of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus is the classic Biblical account of this truth.  Phrases from the story, such as “road to Damascus” itself, and “the scales fell from his eyes,” have entered the English language as proverbial expressions for the moment of amazing grace.  And the irony that the Lord Jesus should appear to this man, who has committed all his considerable talents to stamping out the name of Jesus from the earth, and should call him to make that name known to the nations, was not lost on Paul himself.  It became, in some sense, the core of his message, a compelling illustration of the power of the crucified and risen Christ to break down the best-defended barriers of bigotry, arrogance, and ignorance and create a new humanity in God.

But what is sometimes overlooked is that this is not only the story of the conversion of Paul, but is also about God’s call to a disciple in Damascus called Ananias.  The Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias." He answered, "Here I am, Lord,” which is the standard Biblical literary form for the calling of a prophet.  And what Ananias is called to do is to complete the transforming action of Christ’s grace by ministering to Paul.  To do this he has to overcome his own well-founded suspicion of this man and his motives.  He has to move from the posture of traumatized victim to that of the agent of healing forgiveness.  He has to take a risky further step in trusting the transforming power of resurrection, in opening himself to the joy of being wrong.

We can see a similar vision in the 21^st Chapter of John.  When Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” it is an unmistakable reminder of the night he was betrayed, when they asked Peter three times if he knew Jesus and he denied it.  The risen Christ comes to Peter and gives him the chance for a "do-over," to declare three times not only that he knows Jesus but that he loves him.  It hurts Peter’s feelings, but it also helps him to release his guilt and to embrace the magnificence of his mission.  It reminds of his cowardice, so he can take a stand in his courage.  It reminds him of his faithlessness, so he can step forward in faith.  It reminds him of his refusal, so he can be whole-hearted in his acceptance.  And what is he accepting but a commission to do what Jesus himself has done—to be a shepherd, to feed the flock of the Messianic community with words of life and acts of healing and compassion.

In the same way, the dynamic of our Christian ministry is always simultaneously giving and receiving forgiveness, feeding and being fed.  We do not hold ourselves apart from the sin and suffering that are the common lot of humanity.  We do not pretend that the world is other than that it is, or wish to escape to a private island of material privilege or spiritual transcendence.  We engage with the real stuff of life—which is why stories of resurrection in the New Testament so often involve the sharing of food.  But we do so with a very particular perspective, one that is more of an open inquiry, a wondering, than it is a prescription or a dogma.  It’s a questioning that flows from the knowledge that we are certainly wrong: And so we ask--how could God be present in these circumstances?  What possibility of healing and transformation is here that Christ can see, even if we can’t?  Where are we blocking the energy of love, that could create something new out of this mess?  And what might we say or do, to release the flow, so that we nourish, rather than slaughter, Jesus' lambs?

The breaking of bread which the collect for this Sunday speaks about, the breaking of bread in which we recognize the presence of the risen Christ, is not bread we break for ourselves, but bread broken for us by a stranger, a stranger we are always only just beginning to know.  His is the body that was broken on the cross, that is still broken every day in the victims of our greed, fear, hate, and indifference—and at the same time it is the bread of life.  We do not simply see this broken bread, we break it to share it, to take it into ourselves—it is the food of our redemption and forgiveness.  It nourishes us with the faith and hope and love that animated Jesus, the faith and hope and love of God for the world.  It sends us out to minister to that world in the joy of being wrong, bearing in our bodies both the death of Christ, and the glory of his resurrection, and it opens our eyes to see both cross and resurrection there.

The community of reconciliation

Acts 4:32-35
Psalm 133
1 John 1:1-2:2
John 20:19-31

Our life in Christ, the life of the church, begins with what the Collect for this Sunday calls “the Paschal mystery.”  Which is shorthand for what the passion, and death, and resurrection of Jesus reveals about God.  This revelation is entirely consistent with the mission of Jesus’ life, his teachings and healings and all that he did in Galilee, and in Jerusalem, and everywhere in between.  But the Paschal mystery is how the disciples of Jesus finally understood what he was really all about.   It’s how they knew that he really was the Messiah, The One Anointed by the Spirit to deliver them from bondage and reconcile them to God.  The Paschal mystery was their Passover, an experience of liberation greater even than the deliverance of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt in the Passover of long ago. 

This sounds grand, and it would, in time, prove to have world-shaking implications.  But we have to remember that for all its promising beginnings, the mission of Jesus was, in worldly terms, a total failure.  As a political revolution or a social movement, or even a religious revival, it was a complete bust.  And everyone who thought of it in those terms was disappointed.  They crossed him off the list of potential messiahs and moved on to look for the next likely candidate.  One of his own disciples became aware (we don’t know exactly when) that something was seriously wrong with Jesus’ plan.  His name was Judas, and he decided to trade on his inside information, and so to come out on top when the stuff hit the fan.

The stories say that, later, he regretted his betrayal and took his own life in despair.  And the rest of Jesus’ inner circle must have felt something similar.  Some of them, at least, shared the hopes of the crowd that waved their branches of palm on that day Jesus that rode into Jerusalem and shouted “Hosanna!  Blessed is the Kingdom of our father David that is coming!  Hosanna in the highest!”  So it must have been a shock to learn how badly those hopes had been misplaced.  But, as with Judas, their pain went deeper than mere disillusionment.  It was tinged with personal betrayal.  They may not have led the authorities to the place where Jesus was praying, or singled him out with a kiss, but neither did they stand by him as he was led away to his death.  They abandoned him and fled.

And in the long hours of that grim Friday and desolate Saturday, who can say what dark thoughts ran through their fearful and grief-stricken minds?  As they replayed their recent words and deeds again and again, remembering the bold declarations of loyalty they’d made, and how they’d proved false, what rationalizations and self-justifications did they make to explain?  What recriminations and resentments did they lodge secretly in their hearts, against each other and even against their disgraced master?  

Because for them, the mission of Jesus was personal.  They had not come looking for him, drawn by rumors of a charismatic young rabbi who could heal with a touch of his hand.  He had come looking for them, and they’d left home and family and livelihood in response to his call.     They had not jumped on the bandwagon in the last big journey to Jerusalem, but had been on the road with him all over Galilee, from Tyre and Sidon to the Decapolis and up to Caesarea Philippi.  They’d gone across the sea with him on a stormy night, and to a field at sundown miles from nowhere with a hungry crowd.  They’d gone out to heal the sick and drive out demons in his name, and had preached the coming of the Kingdom of God.

And they’d grown in the process, grown in ways they’d never known they could.  They’d felt important, like their lives mattered for something and that they could make a difference in the world.  They’d learned so much about what God could do if you really had faith, and about what people could be if you treated them with honor and love, like brothers and sisters of a single family.  They’d come to love and depend on each other, and even though they’d had their petty rivalries and jealousies, Jesus had helped them see that with prayer and humility, with patience and forgiveness, they could move through their conflicts to deeper intimacy and trust.

They’d seen a glorious vision of the world as it could be, and they’d imagined that if Jesus was in charge, if they were in charge with him, that vision could come true, not in some distant future time, but here and now.  But in the sleepless hours of those nights in Jerusalem that vision mocked them.  Another had taken its place, and suffocated them with fear—a vision of tramping boots in the narrow street, of fists hammering at the door, of torches and swords, and grasping hands, the cries of an angry mob, the cruel and contemptuous faces of the Gentiles, the scourge, the nails, the agony of hanging from the tree.  How could Jesus have led them there, and left them alone with no hope and no plan, in this city of his enemies?  With only each other for comfort, the very sight of whom was a reminder of how they’d been fooled, and how he had failed?

But still they loved him, and in the end it was love that prevailed.  Love sent Joseph to Pilate to ask for his body, and wrapped it in linen and laid it in his tomb.  Love emboldened the women to keep watch at the cross from afar, and they saw where the body was laid.  In love Mary Magdalene went before dawn on the first day of the week, to stand at the tomb and weep.  It was with the eyes of love that she saw the stone was rolled away.  She ran to Peter and John, whose hearts leaped in love as they raced to the garden and saw that the tomb was empty.  And Jesus came to Mary and spoke her name in love, and she recognized her Teacher.

That night love came through the doors that fear had barred.  He came, not as an avenging ghost, but with the Spirit of peace and forgiveness.  He showed them the marks of his wounds, as if to say, “Yes, it is true.  This world is as you left it when you set out to follow me—estranged from God; trapped in its nightmare of terror and ignorance, its worship of gold, and iron and blood.  But I breathe on you so you will know that the life that flows from love and truth is more real than the works of death.  That life is my life; I gave myself to it completely, and now it lives in me completely, and I can never die. 

It was that life you recognized when we first met.  It was what led you to follow me.  And the journey we began in that moment is not over; the dream we had of a world set free is not false; today it starts to wake the world.  I am with you now more closely than I could be before: I am peace in your heart; I am your love for God and God’s love for you.  And you must be to each other as I was to you, and you were to me, because you are my Body.”

And so they could begin at once to live the new life he’d given them, Jesus chose a time to visit when Thomas wasn’t there.  For a week the disciples celebrated their vindication, and rejoiced at their liberation, praising the goodness and the mercy of God, with one in their midst who refused to believe.  Here is where the church could have fallen apart before it ever got out of the gate.  They could have excluded Thomas for not being one of the elect.  Thomas could have gone away in frustration with this Jesus who had not shown himself to him, and disgust with these crazy people and their outlandish tale.

This is a story for us, about us.  Which of us doesn’t know what it’s like to be Thomas, sitting in church feeling like we’re on the outside looking in?  But this is a story about the birth of a community of reconciliation. It is not constituted by exclusion, or by an exaggerated sense of its own virtue and goodness.  It lives, instead, by the memory of wounds, of loss restored and guilt forgiven.  By the grace of their encounter with the risen Lord, the disciples would not treat Thomas as less than themselves.  And Thomas could see that there was something about them that had changed, something that reminded him of Jesus, and so he stuck around.  He was still there when another Sunday came, when the peace of the risen Lord came among them again, and doubting Thomas put his hand in the wounds of the living God.