2nd Sunday of Easter: B 23-24
2nd Sunday of Easter
Acts 4:32-35 | 1 John 5:1-6 | John 20:19-31
God of everlasting mercy, who in the very recurrence of the Paschal feast kindle the faith of the people you have made your own, increase, we pray, the grace you have bestowed that all may grasp and rightly understand in what fount they have been washed, by whose spirit they have been reborn, by whose blood they have been redeemed. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
It’s fascinating to me that, after the great feast of Easter, the celebration of a new way of understanding God and understanding who we are and why we’re here, focuses on this one key element that Christ won for us and changed the relationship we have with him. When he died for our sins, he offered us redemption, the blood that removes completely the separation that sin was causing always with our relationship with God.
So this shift from the Old Testament to New Testament is so dramatic and so powerful that it’s often missed, and the reason it’s so different is because human beings became different from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Let’s just say the Old Testament lasted for close to — over 2,000 years of God working with people, trying to get them to understand who he is and what he wants from them, and he was desperate to help them realize that they were caught in a way of life that was so self-centered and that they were often at-odds with their brothers and sisters, and when they were, they were filled with anger and resentment and destructive behavior. It was their nature, lower nature. It’s all focused on self. You harm me; I’ll harm you even worse. You do something negative to me; I will make sure you’re punished, because you have damaged me. You have hurt me. The evolution of human beings is a constant, slow movement from a self-centered life to an other-centered life, and when we’re focused on self, the one thing that can be used against us or with us is the idea that, if you don’t do what you are asked to do, you will be punished. So if you don’t want to see yourself in pain, then you’d better pay attention to what I’m telling you. So the whole Old Testament is based on the fear of punishment, which is all focused on self. I don’t want to be punished. I don’t want to be in pain. I don’t want to go to hell, so all right, I’ll do what you say. But I really don’t like doing what you say, because I don’t want to do it. I want to do what serves me. And what God is slowly revealing to human beings is, “Look, the reason I created you, the reason you’re here is I want you to connect with one another and allow me to be the source of a life flow that comes from one person to another. If you allow me to dwell inside of you,” which is the promise of the New Testament, “I will come and dwell in your hearts. If you let me in there, I will do the most extraordinary things through you. I can reach other people. You can join me in serving people. No longer focus on being served yourself. There really isn’t much joy in being self-serving, but what you’re made for, what excites you, what gives you joy is to be there for another person. And you are slowly, slowly evolving into that kind of a person that I intended you to be, and so you’re now, in the New Testament, you are ready.” Two thousand years ago, you were ready to hear something that was shocking, and that is that God no longer feels separated from us, nor should we feel separated from God when we sin.
Listen to the way Jesus first appears to his disciples after they had failed so miserably in being there with him and for him, except for John. They were scared. They were locked in a room out of fear. So when we sin, we’re afraid. We’re afraid of God’s punishment, afraid of disappointing God, afraid of his anger. Sin always separates us. That’s the nature of sin. So when we sin and God looks at us as a sinner, then we have the sense from the Old Testament that he is now angry, and he will punish us, and we no longer have his favor. And so in the New Testament, Jesus does this mysterious thing called redemption, and in that moment, what he did is he took away any sense of anybody who feels that, “I owe God something, because I sinned. I must make up for it. I must repair the relationship.” He’s saying, “No, it’s been repaired. Your sins no longer separate me from you. I am there for you.” That’s what it means he forgives sin, all sin, and yet many people hear that, and they say, “Well, it can’t be true, because if he forgives all sins, then sin doesn’t matter. If he’s not going to send you to hell because you do something wrong, why do something right?” Taking away the fear of God and replacing it with love is the core of this whole Judeo-Christian tradition. Until we understand how loved we are by God, we cannot become who we’re called to be, and if facing our sinfulness, looking at the times in which we failed to be who we’re called to be, if that is the task of being a more mature, more conscious human being, then we’re going to always be confronting our sinfulness. Sins are there for a purpose, for helping us grow, and when we see sin for what it is and we see the emptiness that it creates and the separation and isolation that it creates, we want to turn away from it, because that’s not who we are, and that’s not what we want.
And so it’s essential that we understand that, during this period of time that we’re struggling with our self-centeredness and longing to be more service-oriented, we have to feel that we are loved. Love is the power of the New Testament, and if you’re told that nothing that you do will ever separate you from the love of God, you’re understanding something that is very hard for the mind to grasp, because the mind works in justice. And justice says, “If you do something wrong, you’re going to pay for it.” Well, don’t worry. You will pay for it. Sin always creates separation and isolation from yourself. It creates shame, a sense there’s something wrong with me, a sense of uncomfortableness with who we are. Sin separates us from self, and then the sins that we commit against another or that are committed against us by another separate us from them, and we get caught up in things like anger and revenge and paying them back.
All of that has to be destroyed, removed, and how is it done? First of all, it seems that, if we’re ever going to enter into the place where God intends us to be, the person that God has always had in mind that we will become, we have to believe in that promise that God is there to help us grow into who we ultimately truly are, leaving lies and half-truths behind and living in truth. How do you believe that God will do that for you, since it’s a gift that he and only he can give to you, if he hates you and if he’s angry at you? The most devastating thing, a misunderstanding that we have of our relationship with God, is that sins separate us from him. And that was needed in the Old Testament, but now it isn’t. We need to believe that he loves us, because he has the sense that, within each one of us, there is this kernel, this beautiful thing called our essence, and if it’s loved, if you believe that it’s there, if you can be touching that, that’s — the image of doubting Thomas in this gospel is so interesting, because these men are locked in a room because of fear that they’ve failed and that God is angry with them, and he comes, and he offers them nothing but peace. And he said, “I want you to understand. Your actions did not separate me from you. I’m there for you in your brokenness.” Can you feel that? Can you touch it? Isn’t it interesting that the thing that Thomas had to touch were the wounds? The wounds are the image of God shedding blood for us. I don’t have any way of explaining how it all works, how God’s act of self-sacrificing his Son — how did that work? Don’t get caught in that. Just get caught in the impact of it. The impact is nothing can separate us from God’s attention, his desire that we grow, his desire that we learn, that he will show us things, make us more conscious of the choices that we make and give us a better insight into what those choices produce. I guarantee you, if your choices are based in a life or in a half-truth, they will never produce what you hope they will produce for you, and you’re going to end up empty. And so he said, “If you can believe in me, my love for you in that state, then you have a chance to be connected to me while you’re in this world sinning, causing pain and separation from self and others. I’m in there with you. I’m fighting this fight with you. I’m empowering you to see, most especially, the impact you’re having on people and its result.”
Isn’t it funny how we would — we want so much for the peace of the kingdom, and we’re using all kinds of means to find that fullness when the truth is right here, kind of in our hearts. Believe that God can dwell inside of you and affirm you every second of every day and give you insight into who you are and why you’re here. And if you know that the reason you’re here is to offer a connection with other human beings through longing for them to not be caught in their sin and to not be caught in the isolation it’s creating — think about that. God has a plan where he can live inside of you, and if you see the plan and see the value of it, you will resonate the same thing that he’s resonating to you. The same love that you feel from God in your brokenness, you can give that to someone else, and then they become more conscious of this God event in the world that is the healing power of love. We think so much about our actions, how we treat each other. Yeah, that’s important, and sins can be a way of seeing that negativity that we’re laying on self and others. But it’s more subtle than that. The core reason that we’re here is to be an instrument of giving a power to other human beings just as God has given it to all of us who open our hearts to it. We can share that to give it to another person. That’s what you’re called to be, instruments of this kind of grace, and that would mean that you are a person filled with forgiveness, with mercy. Mercy is another word for favor. Favor is a kind of love that’s given to people that isn’t merited. Do you know how good that feels, when you can have that sense inside of you of self-acceptance in your brokenness and want another person to feel the same kind of self-acceptance for the brokenness that is just our destiny? That brokenness is the essential tool that we use to grow up and to change and to evolve.
If sin — if the goal of the church, if the goal of religion is to get rid of sin, well then, baby, it has failed miserably. In fact, the more conscious one becomes of their sins, the more aware they are of them, and that’s the process of growing in the direction that brings you freedom from sin, to see it for what it is. So if you’re always trying to avoid it, if you never want to think of yourself as sinning, what you’re going to do is repress so many emotions and feelings that come up that are like shame and guilt and fear and anger and revenge. We just repress them. “I’m not supposed to have those feelings.” No, those feelings reveal to you who you are in your conscious state, and if you’re filled with those feelings, you know that there’s something missing, something that you’re needing and longing for. And it comes first from your understanding of the way God looks at you as a sinner, and then you can look at yourself that way and look at another person that way. And then sin no longer has any power. It will not separate you. It will not create enmity between you.
Look at the opening reading, from the Acts one. What was the impact on the community of people who understood who Jesus is and what he was offering? All of a sudden, they all are of one mind and one heart, and they don’t see anything that one of them has as a possession of theirs, but it belongs to everyone. That is the most amazing consciousness state that you could be in. We’re all in this together. We all have something we can offer to each other. Nobody owns holiness. Nobody is a slave to sin. All of it we share, and when we share in the work, in the very essence of what it means to be alive and to be full of this gift called love and we feel it flowing all over the place between everybody, there’s no jealousy, no envy, no competition. That’s the kingdom. The world runs on fear, shame, anger, and the kingdom runs on forgiveness, love, patience, unity, communion. It’s a choice. We have a choice to imagine the world as it is or to imagine it as something it’s not, and the world you imagine is the world you live in.
Father, your Son revealed fully who you are. You are the Son incarnate. He was God and made man, and we see, in this new image of who you are, the lover, the servant, you always have intended yourself to be seen as. For that we give you thanks and praise, but open our hearts to it. We resist it. We’re more used to a system of fear and punishment. Instead you’re inviting us into the mystical world of your life living in us, flowing between us and the people around us, and it’s a world that we’re not familiar with, a world that seems strange to us at first. So please bless us with patience, openness, and surrendering to the truth that you reveal in your very person. Bless us with mercy, and we ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.