Sermon – Holden Village
4.27.14
Easter II
Year A
May I begin
with a little
liturgical public service announcement? The lectionary is the
word which names the
pattern of scripture that is read in worship each Sunday. We are brought into unity
with other Christian
communities as most Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians,
Methodists and
many other bodies of Christ around the world hear the same bible
readings we
hear tonight. The lectionary is a three year cycle, year A
focuses on the
gospel of Matthew, year B on the gospel of Mark and year C on
the gospel of
Luke. Each Sunday we get a reading from the featured gospel, an
Old Testament
reading that compliments the gospel, a Psalm (which we sing)
that supports the
scriptural theme and a New Testament reading that either follows
the theme of
sometimes we just work our way through a New Testament book for
a month or so.
You may or
may not know
that one gospel account that does not get a designated year and
that is the
gospel of John – that incredible book is sprinkled throughout
all three of the
lectionary years and is heavily used after Easter and into the
summer
months. So, beginning in
Advent – the
beginning of the church calendar we entered Year A – the gospel
of Matthew and
will stay in that year until the end of November when the
liturgical year ends
and begins again with the gospel of Mark.
Why am I
telling you
this? Because we have arrived at one of the few Sundays when the
texts are
always the same, from Year A to B to C – every year on the first
Sunday after
the resurrection of Jesus we have these texts.
And really, they are a big ‘ole killjoy! This Sunday is often referred
to as Doubting
Thomas Sunday, focusing on the questions and needs for this one
disciple to
believe in the resurrection of his friend and Rabbi. Given the time of year, and
the abundant
beauty of our worship space – it feels as though we should still
have stories
in the garden, people running freely and yelling joyfully “He is
Risen!” Instead we have
the disciples, terrified,
hiding in a locked and darkened room.
This move of
the
lectionary, which brings us from the high of Eastern morn and
immediately into
the reality of what resurrection really means in for our daily
living feels
jarring…it also feels real. When
Becky
was transforming the ReReDos into their Easter glory, she
astutely commented
that the deep, Lenten purple would not be easily hidden, it just
kept bleeding
through to give our Easter white a dose
of reality. The promises
of God were
certainly fulfilled on Easter, and they are laid over our real,
scarred,
terrifying existence. The
white is so
true it will not erase the purple of our lives, but transform it
into something
new.
And so every
year we have
the very candid disciples,. ..wondering how the empty tomb will
now alter or
even derail life as they once knew it.
The promises of God are not all Easter lilies and high
holy hymns, the
promise of God come out of darkened caves and into our locked
rooms.
The gospel writer, John is always telling us
what time of day
it is. And for John –
the cover of dark
is a large part of the entire gospel story.
Nicodemus comes to ask questions of Jesus at night, Jesus walked on the stormy
waters after
evening had fallen and even the
betrayal
and arrest of Jesus happened in the dark.
This is the season of white, of brilliant and dazzling
hope. And yet our gospel
story has pulled us into a
darker place…a locked room at nightfall.
Time article promoting Barbara Brown Taylor’s
new book, recommended by
Sue Wilson…
It is 10:45 on a
Sunday night when
Barabara Brown Taylor sets off from her front porch. The light in her northern
Georgia farmhouse
are off, the chickens have been cooped, and her husband Ed has
cleaned the
kitchen and gone upstairs to bed. A
waning moon will not rise for hours.
Time for a walk. Most
spiritual
seekers spend their lives pursuing enlightenment. But this Easter-tide,
Taylor is encouraging
believers and nonbelievers not only to seek the light but to
face the darkness
too, something that 21st century Americans tend to
resist. For the past
four years, the popular
62-year-old preacher has explored wild caves, lived as if
blind, stared into
her darkest emotions and, over and over, simply walked out
into the night. The
reasons, she says, are that contemporary
spirituality is too feel-good, that darkness holds more
lessons that light and
that contrary to what many of us have long believed, it is
sometimes in the
bleakest void that God is nearest.
On a very practical
level, she says,
we pay a high price to shut out the darkness.
We glue our eyes to screens by day, while electric
light hampers our
ability to sleep at night. Then,
when we
lie awake with all our fears, we turn to solitaire or to sleep
aids to
cope. Our spiritual
avoidance of the
dark may be even more dangerous.
Our
culture’s ability to tolerate sadness is weak.
As individuals, we often run away from it. “We are supposed to get
over it…do whatever
it takes to become less sad,” she says.
“Turning in to darkness, instead of away from it, is
the cure for a lot
of what ails me. Because
I have a deep
need to be in control of things…to do it all without help—and
you can’t do any
of that in the dark.”
Reading this article led to reflection on the
physical darkness
we experience in the village– sometimes on purpose, sometimes
accidentally. We know
the darkness of power outages, we
know the seasonal darkness of the sun staying hidden behind the
mountain peaks
and the lengthening of nighttime in the heart of the winter. We also know darkness which
we invite – each
Friday night when the worship space is transformed into a
darkened room. Why is
the absence of light such an effective
way of centering our thoughts and prayers, helping us to relax
into prayer or
meditation, clinging to promises spoken out in the darkness. Does it take the presence of
darkness to help
our honest tears flow, or our need to save face finally
collapse?
Or how about the stages of darkness we live
through. Transitions,
unknowns, strained
relationships, personal failures, disease or injustice…darkness
comes in all
sorts shades and concentrations.
And it
is most often in these times of darkness, when everything else
that so easily
distracts us or distorts our spiritual living falls away, and we
are forced to
lean on our faith instead of our own understand.
Back to that locked room and the
disciples…Thomas is asking
for signs of faith he can see and touch.
Thomas comes to the darkened room, travelling in fear in
the evening and
hears about the resurrected Jesus.
He
gets what we, contemporary disciples get, a second hand account
of the story
without the flesh. He
makes an honest
statement of what he spiritually needs and is forever cast as
“doubting Thomas”
in the legacy of the church. Could
his
doubt be renamed honesty…or a cry for help? In the dark he calls
out for what
he needs to help his unbelief, to help his sense of God’s
presence, to
understand what the resurrection will mean as he moves forward
in life.
The gift of faith comes to Thomas in the form
of the risen
Jesus. Jesus appears in
the dark room,
and speaks a word of peace. Perhaps
the
gift of faith comes to us more profoundly in the dark because
that is where we
need it the most. The
seasons of light
are the seasons where we have more answers and feel more
self-sufficient and
who needs faith when all is well? Seasons of darkness are the
seasons that
crack us open, reminding us of our need for everlasting Love and
unfailing
mercy. In the dark we
can hear the voice
of the risen Christ saying to us, “Peace be with you” even when
we are locked
in our dark rooms for fear of all we do not know or understand.
Martin Luther speaks of faith this way, “Faith is a divine work in us.
It changes us
and makes us to be born anew of God (John 1). It kills the old
Adam and the old
Eve and makes altogether different people, in heart and spirit
and mind and
powers, and it brings with it the Holy Spirit…Faith is a living,
daring
confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a person
would stake their
life on it a thousand times.[i]
We are children of God who call upon faith,
not in the times
of light, but in times of darkness. That
is where we look to God, walk in faith, through the darkness we
cannot navigate
on our own! The darkness corrects our ways of self-sufficient
living and allows
us to surrender to the God of life and light-
in the darkness we confess our doubts, our failures and
because of this
risen Christ we are generously led to faith in God.
Spend time in the physical darkness, and face
the inner and
surrounding darkness of your life and this world. For the risen Christ is
there, waiting to
speak that word of peace and to bring faith.
Our seasons or experiences of darkness will not
ultimately be defined by
the darkness itself, but they will meet the resurrected Jesus
and therefore, be
forever transformed, new ways of understanding and living will
come with this
life of faith. Wrestle
with your
emotional darkness and listen for the voice of God which speaks
words of life
and light.
Barbara Brown Taylor says this: New life starts in the dark.
Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb,
or Jesus in the
tomb, it starts in the dark.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
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