Well, here we all are, back in church the Sunday AFTER all the hoopla,
all those lilies and brass and tympani and extra people. For quite
some time, this day was actually known in the official nomenclature
of the Catholic Church as Low Sunday, but not really because this
Sunday seemed so un-special after all the solemnities of Easter Day.
That name was really just the corruption of the Latin name of the
day, Laudes Salvatori, from a phrase in the liturgy, “Let us
sing praises to the Savior.” Somewhere along the way, “laudes”
became “low” and that seemed to fit the mood of this day
just fine.
Now
of course we pulled a fast one on you this year and chose this very
day to actually do something quite exciting and special by introducing
our new organist, Christoph Bull. It is a delight to welcome you this
morning, Christoph. Your predecessors and Jim Smith have trained this
congregation well to appreciate beautiful and powerful organ music,
music that deepens and enhances our worship and experience of God.
Welcome!
So
maybe Low Sunday isn’t so Low after all. It is the Second Sunday
of Easter, or Easter Two as I like to call it, because that can either
mean “two” as in the number two, or “t-o-o”,
as in also Easter, still Easter. A great reminder that in its wisdom,
the church made Easter into a whole season of fifty days rather than
just one great mountain top experience, come and gone.
Eastertide
stretches Easter out to give us more time to take it all in. It’s
like going slow motion, dwelling in its power and glory, so that it
becomes not just a one-shot experience but an extended period to take
in the power and glory of our Risen Savior. You know, something similar
is actually going on in the heavens right now. You astronomers out
there will know this, but I just recently learned that the planet
Jupiter is currently traveling in a retrograde motion relative to
the background stars. Normally planets move westward through the sky.
They are said to be in retrograde when they appear to be moving eastward,
which Jupiter does about four months each year, from now until August
7th.
Now
it’s all a bit more complicated than that. Astronomy usually
is. But my point is that the retrograde period is the best time of
year to see the planet. If you look early in the morning, while it
is still dark, Jupiter is the brightest object in the vicinity of
the moon. So, you see, we might think of Eastertide as something of
a retrograde season in the church year, when we slow down and back
up a bit and linger over the appearances of our Risen Lord. It’s
a time to observe, to look closely, and to see what we might learn.
This is a series of Sundays in which we will hear from John’s
Gospel a variety of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances and
interactions with the disciples, an extended period of asking: given
the Resurrection, now what? Hoopla behind us, who is Jesus? Who are
we? What are we supposed to do now?
Let’s
go back to that scene and reconstruct a bit where we start out. The
verses we hear this morning from John’s Gospel follow immediately
on the passage of Easter Day; but because we hear them a week apart
from each other, we might not see the immediate connection. After
the women have found the stone rolled away from the tomb and discovered
that the body is not there; after Peter finds the tomb empty; then,
later that same evening, the disciples have gathered in a house and
locked the doors from fear. Jesus stands among them. He says: “Peace
be with you” and then shows them his hands and his side. They
rejoice to see him and Jesus says again: “Peace be with you.”
But then there’s Thomas, who wasn’t there at first, who
needs to see for himself. It’s why he gets the name “Doubting
Thomas” and why, in some traditions, this Sunday is called St.
Thomas Sunday. So Thomas joins the others to get the proof he needs,
and lo and behold, Jesus again says to them all now, Thomas included:
“Peace be with you.”
There
are many fascinating things about this story and we could spend hours
on each one. The fear of the disciples that drove them to cower together
and lock the door. The ability of Jesus to stand in their midst. The
audacity of Thomas to demand proof. But what I want to focus on this
morning is the message of Jesus to his disciples immediately post-Resurrection.
They’re all asking: “Now what?” and he says: “Peace
be with you.”
As
the writer, Madeleine L’Engle, has pointed out: “After
his resurrection, when he returned to his disciples and friends, he
bestowed peace upon them, not anger or punishment. The first thing
he said to them was not, “where were you when I needed you?”
but, “Peace be with you.”
Can’t we imagine that Jesus would have been entitled to chastise
them, to question them, or at least to just shake his head in dismay
and sorrow? Why had they betrayed and denied him? Why had they all
run away, except the women who stayed at the cross? Why could they
not believe all that he had told them about his death and resurrection?
Why did they need proof? Why was their faith so shallow and so fearful?
He
does none of that. Here he’s left with this motley bunch, some
fearful, some rejoicing, some having stayed steady, some having fallen
away, some strong, some weak, some trusting, some doubting, all fairly
clueless about what to do now, post-crucifixion, post-resurrection,
and he loves them still. And he says “Peace be with you.”
Three times. To them all. “Peace be with you.”
I
have a feeling that that’s just the word we may all need to
hear this morning. Peace be with you. We’re all at different
places on our faith journey. We “do discipleship” differently
and we are very often impatient with one another, at best. Our lives
are stressed to the max. There’s just too much of everything
going on all at once, even if a lot of it is good. Many among us are
not really all that sure about this church thing, this religion thing,
though we sense that we might like to be.
Right
out of the pages of the Bible, Jesus is saying to us this morning:
“Peace be with you.” All of you.
What
is this peace that he gives, not as the world gives, as he tried to
point out at their Last Supper? What is the peace of God that passes
all understanding? What is this peace that transforms us, that grounds
and centers us? What is this peace that is the ground of our being?
I
recently read a wonderful account of what peace means from the position
of a Christian from the Orthodox branch of our great faith family.
It seems like a great way of giving one answer to the “now what?”
question in this retrograde season of Eastertide. Because it’s
not so much about doing as about being and I think that’s what
Jesus was trying to convey that day. When he said: “Peace be
with you” he was speaking to their hearts, to their center,
to their core and grounding them in the fullness and the wholeness
and the assurance of God’s peace for us all.
This
Orthodox writer, a young woman, was attending classes at the time
at one of our United Methodist seminaries. She was taking a class
on social transformation and the church’s role in peace and
justice issues and it was all about conferences and resolutions and
letter-writing campaigns and so forth. She writes that she was learning
a lot, but that she felt that her part of the Christian perspective
was missing.
And
so, one day, in order to convey an Orthodox understanding of peace,
she showed the class a photo of an Orthodox Peace Conference held
in Central Europe shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was
a photo simply of twelve Orthodox bishops standing in prayer before
an icon of Christ.
She
explained that “for Orthodox Christians throughout the world,
the love of God, of humankind, of all God’s creation and especially
God’s church are the central and grounding reality of existence.
All [good works] proceed from and depend upon our ability to choose
to live in the teachings of Christ…For Orthodox [Christians],
transformation of the person is critical…our immediate purpose
is purity of heart, from which arises that “peace [that passes]
all understanding and which displaces all…fear. …we must
be [open] to the experience of love and peace in Christ, receiving
from Christ the courage to infuse that peace into the way of life
around us.”
I
think Jesus knew for his disciples, for us, in the chaos of the immediate
post-Resurrection moment or in the everydayness of our lives, that
before any doing or going or sending or witnessing or serving—all
of which he commands us to do, never forget--but before all that comes
his invitation to abide in the peace of God. And so he breathes it
into them that day, John says, just as God breathed the whole creation
into being and breathed new life into Ezekiel’s dry bones. Jesus
breathes new life into his frightened and confused disciples, the
presence and power of the Holy Spirit coming into them as his peace.
He bestows upon them the blessing of the shalom of God, that state
of wholeness and security that undergirds all of who we are and what
we do.
Perhaps
we Californians can best understand it using the expression of one
writer who has called this peace the “aloha” of our faith,
the coordination of mind and heart. Like aloha, it means hello, goodbye,
I love you, you are my friend. It means kindness, tenderness, harmony
and unity. It means humility and patience and perseverance and an
incredible kind of quiet deep strength that the world can neither
give nor take away. “Peace I leave with you,” Jesus said.
“My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.
Let not your hearts be troubled; neither let them be afraid.”
In
this retrograde season of Eastertide, we are privileged to linger
awhile with our Risen Lord, to see him at his brightest, to contemplate
his glory, his power, his abiding and his love.
Unlock the door of your heart on this morning of Easter, Too. And
may the blessing of his peace be the message you receive. It is for
you. It is for us all.
Notes:
Jupiter in retrograde from www.earthsky.org. April 7, 2007.
Demetra Velisarios Jaquet. “An Orthodox Perspective on Peace”
in The Living Pulpit, Vol. 7 No. 4.
Peace as “aloha” from a sermon by James Mueller at Göttinger
Predigten im Internet.
©Patricia
Farris, 2007. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
First
United Methodist Church
1008 Eleventh Street
Santa Monica, CA 90403
www.santamonicaumc.org
(310) 393-8258
NOW
WHAT?