Conflict Redeemed

• Acts 2:14a,22-32
• 1 Peter 1:3-9
• John 20:19-31
• Psalm 16

As a pastor, one of the most critical parts of my job is to help people work through conflict.  Not that I’m always successful.  I am aware of relationships in our community where there is so much hurt and mistrust, and the conflicted parties are so deeply entrenched in their positions, that the most they can manage for each other is avoidance, and when needed, a chilly civility.   And there are questions that touch on our common life, where there are differences of opinion so pronounced, that we prefer not to talk about them.  We have to admit that it is a fact of life that, as the educator Parker Palmer once put it, “community is where you find the person you least want to live with,” and maybe the best we can hope for is to keep such conflicts from flaring into open hostility.  But the resurrection of Jesus offers a better hope than that. 

The story of Jesus is, after all, a story of conflict.  And at time of the Passover, the annual celebration of God’s decisive victory over the oppressors of the people, Jesus took the conflict to Jerusalem.  He brought his challenge to the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes, right into the heart of their stronghold—into the temple.  The gospels tell how as Jesus was teaching in the temple the ruling elite sent one representative after another to spar with him verbally, to try to back him down or trip him up--and how every time, their attacks blew back in their faces. 

Because Jesus turned each loaded question and devious insinuation into a subtle but devastating indictment of his opponents, of their cowardice, injustice and hypocrisy, their complicity with violence and idolatrous religion.  And with each of these encounters the crowd of on-lookers and their enthusiasm for Jesus and his teaching grew.  Until, fearing a total public relations disaster, no one dared ask him any more questions.

But the conflict didn’t end there.  Unable to take Jesus down publicly, the temple elite did what the powerful often do when they have lost their moral and political legitimacy.   They resorted to treachery and violence.   You know the story very well: how at supper Jesus told his disciples that one of them, his closest friends, would betray him to his death; how Judas Iscariot went out into the night, only to return later, leading the temple goons to the garden where Jesus used to go to pray; how he singled him out for them with a kiss.   You know how Jesus refused to fight, or to let his disciples fight for him, and how they scattered and fled as he was dragged away; how Peter followed, but when he was confronted, denied that he knew Jesus, not once, but three times.

You know this story so there’d really be no need to retell it if it were not for the fact that with the coming of Easter, that story so often disappears.  It is forgotten immediately, as if, in raising Jesus from the dead, God made the conflicts that led to his death irrelevant, or miraculously resolved them.   But such radical discontinuity between Holy Week and Easter is far from biblical.  Just look at Peter’s sermon in the Second Chapter of Acts.  It is a bold declaration that God has set Jesus of Nazareth free from the power of death, but it begins with an equally bold reminder to “you, my fellow Israelites,” that “you crucified this man, whom God attested to you with deeds of power, wonders, and signs, by the hands of those outside the law.” 

The Acts of the Apostles tells how the conflict that marked Jesus’ life and death doesn’t end with his rising from the dead, which itself only serves to prove that the conflict runs deeper, and its stakes are higher, than anyone previously thought.  In the resurrection, God’s Holy Spirit not only vindicates Jesus’ movement to renew Israel by a prophetic insurrection from below.  She also gives unprecedented power and universal scope to that movement, so that it breaks out across the world to challenge every “religion” that gives ideological cover to systems of exclusion and domination, and confronts the idols of the nations in the name of Israel’s God of creation, justice, healing and love.

But the Gospel of John tells us that before that can happen, the risen Christ has to reconcile his own community of disciples.  It is a traumatized community, not only because of the horrifying death of the teacher in whom they had placed such hope, but because the treachery of the ostensible leaders of their nation.  And one of their own inner circle aided and abetted that treachery, which they all passively acquiesced to out of fear.  That same fear still gripped them as they gathered for the evening meal on the first day of the week, and though one of them had not arrived, they locked the doors.  Who knows what premonitions of further betrayal haunted their minds as they thought of Thomas the Twin, out there somewhere as darkness fell on the city, doing who knows what, with who knows whom?

It is into the middle of this threatened little circle that the Lord came, bringing his peace.  He showed them the marks of betrayal on his body, and again said “Peace be with you.”  And they would need that peace when Thomas arrived.  We are used to thinking of Thomas as the one who doubted God, but it was not God whom Thomas doubted—it was his friends.  Maybe in the aftermath of seeing Jesus they were full of love and joy, and disbelief that they had ever doubted Thomas, but to him they seemed to be in the grip of a kind of group delusion.  Maybe he questioned why they would say that the Lord come to them when he was not there—what kind of game were they playing, and why didn’t it include him? 

My point is that we don’t know how Thomas’ doubt might have divided this already frail community, if the others had not received the Spirit of peace?  This peace is not simply an inner feeling.  It is an active power, the power to forgive.  The spiritual power of forgiveness, flowing from the crucified and risen Christ, is what breathed new life into the community of Jesus’ disciples, as it has ever since, again and again and again.  It is the power in which we are sent, as Jesus was sent, into inevitable conflict, to speak the word of God’s peace. 

It is also the power of discernment, because forgiveness can never be automatic.  It must be free, a decision given and received with eyes that see clearly the wounds that sin has made in the body of God.   But our standard of judgment must be Jesus himself: Jesus, who said “judge not, lest you be judged;” Jesus, who preferred agony on the cross to violence against those who misjudged him; Jesus, who sat down at supper with the one he knew would betray him and gave him bread and said, “this is my body, given for you.” 

Such forgiveness is hard to achieve, but simple to understand.  You just have to hold out your hand.  We are talking here about the difference between an open hand and a clenched fist.  The open hand is what Jesus presents to Thomas, when he shows himself at last, and Thomas understands that it is the hand of God.  This is a God who is not afraid of conflict, but lets us doubt, and disbelieve, and probe the painful places where the mere idea of God is not enough.  And if we don’t give up, but keep working through the conflict, a time comes when we find we are touching a living body. 

Our community is that body, a crucified body, risen out of conflict, bearing wounds.  And with that resurrection we were also given the Spirit of forgiveness, the power to make peace, to heal betrayal and come to trust each other again.  There is no more important work for us than to learn to use that gift.  Because it wasn’t given for our enjoyment, so we could congratulate ourselves on what a nice, warm, happy family we’ve become.  It was given to us as a mission; it is the Spirit in which we’ve been sent.      

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.         

Not all there is to the egg

Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Acts 10:34-43
John 20:1-18

As religious holidays go, Easter is a bit of a challenge.  People often compare it to Christmas, and—let’s face it—Christmas wins.  Because Christmas is easy to understand.  It is about the birth of a child, and that needs no explanation.  All of us remember what it was like to be a child, and we know what it is like to hold a child.  You can make a picture of a baby, and put a mother and father in the picture, with a donkey and cow, and maybe a star or an angel, and you can write “Merry Christmas!” on it and send it to a friend.  And even if that friend is not a Christian, they can admire the pretty picture, and understand what it is about, and why it makes you happy.

But Easter is different.  The story of Easter begins at a tomb, and who wants to think about a tomb?  Who wants to draw that on a card and send it to a friend?  And that tomb is empty, because the man who was dead in the tomb came out, and now he is alive.  So you could send a picture of the man, but while the baby in the manger is sweet and lovable, the living man of Easter is controversial.  He always was—that’s why he ended up in tomb in the first place. 

And I think that even for us who are attracted to that man, who try to believe in the things he died for, and are glad to hear he is alive, it is still hard to know exactly how to talk about it.  Easter is about finding that the house of death, that we thought was full, is actually empty, and how do you talk about emptiness? It’s about a man whose life is not closed off, but open and infinite.  And how do you make a picture of infinite openness?  If he is alive he has a future, and how do you celebrate what you don’t yet know? 

One way to talk about it is in terms of freedom.  Easter comes from Passover, the ancient Jewish festival of Spring, but also of freedom; and the Jewish story of freedom begins with a voice that speaks to Moses out of a bush that burns but is not consumed.  And the voice tells Moses its name, a name you can’t pronounce, a name that means “I will be who I will be.”  The body of Jesus that rose from the tomb is like that bush and that voice.  It lives and lives and is never used up.  Its future is open and free.       

Or you can think about Easter as transformation, like that ancient image of the egg.  The egg, that is so perfect and complete.  It is closed, and contains within itself everything that is needed, so it is hard to imagine it ever changing at all.  So it is only when something stirs unexpectedly inside the egg, and suddenly a tiny beak starts pecking through, that we realize that the egg is not all there is to the egg. It only exists for the sake of the new thing that breaks the shell and bursts out, fluffy and yellow and peeping, and totally alive.  

Yesterday I thought of another image for Easter, of freedom and transformation, which is the universe.  People used to think that the physical universe was closed, like an egg.  But in recent times we have learned that the universe is actually expanding in all directions.  Some of the scientists who study these things say that it will keep expanding and expanding forever, and some say that, as it does, the fires of the universe will get colder and colder until they go out, one by one.  To them the universe is a tomb.  But no one really knows, and I prefer to think the expansion is a sign that the universe is open.  It is free.  And maybe it really is an egg, hatching something unexpected, entirely new.

 

But none of these images of Easter can really take the place of the stories of Jesus’ resurrection.  They are stories of freedom, because the thing that was supposed to be closed forever is open.  Even Death can’t hold Jesus captive, thanks to the freedom of God.   And they are stories of transformation.  Mary Magdalene doesn’t know that it’s Jesus at first.  She thinks it’s the gardener, because even though it’s definitely him, he’s not the same.  And when she recognizes him, she tries to hold him, but she can’t, because he is still on his way.

And that’s really the whole point, isn’t it?--that Jesus is not a character in a story that once was written in a book and now is over.  We don’t close the book and say, “okay, that was a nice story—now what?”  We keep the book open because Jesus is the “now what?”  And this resurrection story tells us what that means.  Because the climax of the story, the moment when Mary sees the risen Lord, comes after Jesus calls her by her name.  The freedom and transformation of the resurrection is not just something that happened to Jesus—it’s something that happened for us.  It is not the story of someone else’s past—it is the story of our future, the future we all have together in God.

We Christians sometimes talk about this future as if it will come from outside of us, as if Jesus is some kind of superweapon who will come down from heaven and blow everything way.  But the Jesus of the Easter Gospel is a future that opens out from within and among us.  He hatches out of our human story like a chick out of an egg.  We don’t recognize him, because we keep looking for the corpse that should be in the tomb.  But all the while he is alive and calling us by name.

When Mary hears her name and sees that it is Jesus, she cries out “Teacher!”  And that is what he is.  It is his voice speaking in our hearts that tells us we are not captive to the mistakes we have made, or our bad habits, or our worn out old images of ourselves, but in every moment our life is open and we are free.  Our teacher is calling us to follow his path of transformation, a journey that embraces our gifts and our weaknesses, our struggles and our victories, our doubts and our faith, our sorrows as well as our joys.  It even embraces death, the one aspect of our future we think we know with certainty.  But his life swallows death, and clothes our mortal bodies with the glory of God.   

And because it is the same Christ who is calling each and every one, what is coming into being in us is not just a new person.  It is a new world—a world from which the curse of destruction and the fear of death have been lifted; a world of unity, compassion, and justice, of deep and abiding peace; a world in which the fullness of God’s glory dwells for everyone to see, in all beings, in every cell and molecule, every drop of water and grain of sand.   This inconceivable future comes into the world in a single person, but through his death and resurrection it comes to all of us.  And so this celebration itself is a living symbol of what it celebrates.  If you want to see Christ’s resurrection, look around you.  We act it out in public every Sunday, the eighth day of the week, the first day of a new creation. 

Called by Christ we gather here, each one called by name, and we blend our voices into one song, the song of resurrection.  We open the book, the book that no hate or fear or prejudice can ever close, the book of resurrection.  We hear the living words of Christ, and keep them in our hearts; we proclaim again that these are our words, for our generation, our world, our future.  We bless the bread and wine, the gifts our teacher gave the night before his death, to be the ever-present signs of his coming.  We break and share one imperishable food, we pass one ever-flowing cup.  We take them into our bodies, to become our bodies, the many bodies of the risen Christ.  And in those bodies we go out, as witnesses of resurrection, emissaries, sent to be the freedom and the transformation of the world.