Easter 2B; John
20:19-31; St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 4/28/2019
Jim Melnyk: “The Time is Fulfilled”
When it comes to faith there are four little words people
utter that always give me pause. “No doubt about it.” Actually, those are the
words. “No doubt about it.” Sometimes the Church can get so sure of itself that
it treats doubt like a four-letter word – and those who doubt as people
bordering on unbelief. And when we find ourselves doubting – well, we find all
kinds of ways of chastising ourselves. Yet every year on the second Sunday of
Easter we tell the story of Doubting Thomas – the disciple who wouldn’t accept
his colleagues’ witness about the Risen Christ until he was given the
opportunity to look upon, and touch, Christ’s nail-scarred hands and spear-torn
side. And every time I get the chance to say a word regarding this passage from
John’s Gospel I take the opportunity to remind us that Thomas didn’t ask for
anything beyond what his colleagues had already experienced personally earlier that
day.
Tradition
has labeled Thomas “Doubter,” but how is he any different from the others? Earlier
in the morning Mary Magdalene meets the Risen Christ in the garden near his
tomb. With great joy, according to John’s account, she becomes an Apostle to
the Apostles, proclaiming Christ’s resurrection to those who had followed Jesus
so faithfully. Their response – or rather, the response of everyone except
Thomas – is to hide behind locked doors in fear of the leaders who had
orchestrated the death of Jesus. For the disciples gathered that first evening,
well, their doubt has been every bit as tangible as Thomas’ doubt – that is until
they, like Mary, experience the Risen Christ for themselves as well.
But that’s
okay. Who among us, faced with the story of the Risen Christ, hasn’t wrestled
with how such a thing can be? Who doesn’t wonder, at least from time-to-time,
if the resurrection is more metaphor of faith than narration of historical
reality? All too often we hide our doubts; perhaps being afraid that our doubts
signal a lack of faith.
I’ve known folks over the years
that swear to me they have never had a single doubt about their faith. In fact,
I’m willing to bet there’s at least a little, if not a good bit, of Missouri
Christian in all of us (you know Missouri – the “show me” state?). But that’s
really not a bad thing! One of the first things we pray for folks who are newly
baptized is for God to give them “an inquiring and discerning mind.” Our hearts
are created to seek – created to question. We have always been, and always will
be, a people who wrestle with God and with God’s call to us – just read the
stories of our faith!
Thomas
isn’t such a terrible person – in fact, he’s been one of the most up-front,
“let’s follow this Jesus even if it means death” kind of guy. Doubt isn’t such
a terrible thing; rather it’s the very thing that causes us to engage the
stories of our faith and our experiences of God. In fact, doubt can actually
serve as an invitation into a deeper experience of faith. These are good things
for us to know, but I think there’s more lurking in the shadows of this passage
from John.
If we take
a moment and go back to the beginning of the earliest Gospel record – go back
to the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel – we hear Jesus proclaim, “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good
news.”[1] “The
time is fulfilled.”
It may be
argued, I think, that the entire Gospel witness – the entire witness from all
four Gospels – finds its impetus and its power – finds its challenge to us – in
that simple phrase: “The time is fulfilled.”
There is a
sense of timeliness to the advent of Jesus – whether it be Matthew’s or Luke’s
baby in Bethlehem,Mark’s young man coming out of a small town in Galilee to
the baptismal waters of the Jordan River, or John’s Cosmic Christ – The Word
Made Flesh and living among us. There is a purposeful sense to the timing of
Jesus and his witness.
There is a time for Jesus to go
about the towns and cities of Israel proclaiming the coming reign of God. There
is a time for Jesus to challenge the powers that be. There is a time for Jesus to
challenge the political and religious empires of his day – shaking their
foundations, and helping both the powerful and the powerless envision the
radical presence and purpose of the kingdom – or kindom – of God. Jesus’
willingness to stand in the midst of the empire’s armed encampment and proclaim
good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for those
whom the world oppresses means that there is also a time for him to pay the
ultimate price – his own life – as a witness to the power of self-giving love.
And now, in
an upper room, behind closed and locked doors, the time is fulfilled once
again. It is time for those who struggled to understand the mission and message
of Jesus as he walked the dusty roads of Jerusalem and Galilee – it is time for
those who feared the reality of arrest and death – it is time for those who with
fear and confusion heard Mary’s fantastic story of resurrection and new life –
it is time for these followers of Jesus to become followers of the Risen
Christ.
It is time
for them to experience the Shalom of God’s reign – which means so much more than
our translation as “peace” conveys. It is time for them to experience the
wholeness of God’s grace – it is a time to experience the wholeness of God’s
presence – it is a time to experience the wholeness of God’s power to bring
about a change of heart and a change in direction for a world broken by the
power of sin.
With the advent of the Holy Spirit
in the disciples’ lives – whether this first Easter evening according to John
or at Pentecost according to Luke – it is a time to understand that the shalom
of God is meant to bring about a kindom of forgiveness, a kindom of reconciliation,
a kindom of healing, which are signs of the love of God incarnate in the lives
of God’s people.
It is time for the followers of the
Risen Christ to proclaim the shalom of God, calling the people of God to “go
beyond the mind that they have”[2] –
to think beyond the boundaries of their everyday thinking – to envision their
lives, and the life of the world, with the eyes and the heart of God. To finally find a way to stop shooting up mosques, churches, and synagogues!
The Risen
Christ stands among us today in the power of the Holy Spirit and calls us each
to new ways of thinking and acting in this world – to new ways of envisioning
the coming of God’s reign in a world where the power of empire still seeks to
hold the grace of God at bay.
Our calling as people of God is to
be open to the power and grace of God’s reign – to challenge the powers-that-be
to “go beyond the minds that they have” – to be open to the good news of the
Gospel of Jesus – good news that lifts up the lowly, the hungry, and the oppressed,
and scatters the proud in their conceit.
At the end of his ministry Jesus
set his face toward Jerusalem and not look back. “The Church, the Body of
Christ, is to set its face forward and not look back. We have a vision before
us of radical inclusion,” writes Brother Mark Brown. “Even the bitterest
enemies are reconciled in [the kindom of God.]”[3] Imagine
that happening in the midst of all the division our world knows today! Now that
would be going beyond the minds our culture has shown itself to have.
The
challenge we face in the coming days and weeks, and throughout the rest of our
lives, is this: to go beyond the minds that we have, and to see this world with
the mind of Christ – and to live socially, politically, and faithfully as best
we can; not with the moral dogma of stridently opposing religious beliefs, but
with the mind of Christ. Because as Mahatma Gandhi reminded everyone, “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in
their mission can alter the course of history.”[4] “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near…. Blessed are those who have
not seen and yet have come to believe.”[5] Amen.
[1] Mark
1:15
[2] Marcus
Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last
Week, p. 25
[3] Brother
Mark Brown, SSJE, Brother Give Us a Word.
[4] Mahatma
Gandhi, quoted in Synthesis Today,
4/23/2019.
[5] Mark
1:15 and John 20:29b
No comments:
Post a Comment