Sermons

Every Morning Is Easter Morning

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
March 30, 2008	John 20:19-31

    
We are experiencing our own version of March Madness around here – it is called our capital campaign, “Faith for the Future.” Perhaps you can feel the anticipation and excitement mounting. Several things are happening all at once in preparation for our kickoff next Sunday, though I prefer the term “opening day.”

You will notice a new exhibit in our gallery space. It contains a series of the architectural drawings and quotations. Check that exhibit out – with special thanks to Peg Rachfal.

On Friday, a final packet of information was put in the mail. It contains a summary of the three-part proposal with some architectural updates, and other campaign information. A special word of thanks to the communications team, headed by Laurie Mahoney and Carol Coons, the web team, headed by Vince Tollers and Linc Spaulding – and an extra measure of thanks to Debra Bishop, for her dedication and skill as a graphic designer, and her unbelievable patience at working with us!

Look for that brochure this week. It will be the springboard for the conversation you will share with a congregational visitor beginning a week from today. In fact, our visitors are hard at work on their training with our consultant, Bob Kukla. More than 100 of your fellow members and friends. We are grateful for their commitment. There is still room for you to join that distinguished. Thanks to Karen and Don Pryor and Dick and Brenda Mains for their work in organizing this phase of the campaign.

And if you didn’t know, we are launching all of this with a huge, huge, party this Friday night. Our hospitality team, headed by Peg and Jay Rachfal and Maryjane and Ken Link – with a host of others – will dress up this place like you’ve never seen it, though not so much that you will forget why we are having a capital campaign. The food will be great. The entertainment will be fabulous. And the company even better. You will not want to hear Saturday morning what a great event you missed Friday night.

So many have offered so much thus far to get us were we are – and I think we are ready. I am! I look forward to seeing what our response to this campaign will be, and how each of us will connect to the vision. But even more than that, I look forward to the ways that this campaign will activate our spiritual life, and imagine new possibilities for service and ministry in this congregation by carrying forth the legacy that we have been given – bricks and mortar to be sure, but our calling as God’s people for such a time as this. So thanks to all of you for your prayerful consideration in the days ahead.

***

We laid it all on the line seven days ago. The flowers. The ushers in overdrive. The “Hallelujah” chorus. Countless visitors and family members – and despite the earliest Easter in more than 90 years – it will happen again on March 23 in the year 2228, and despite a sunrise service that forgot to include the sun but that did include all of 22 degrees – it was a simply spectacular day.

So it’s no surprise that the Sunday after Easter is typically called in the business “Low Sunday.” Where can you go from here? But I will have none of it! In fact, the sermon title is adapted from a youth choir anthem I sang more than a few years ago. “Every morning is Easter morning from now on. Every day’s resurrection day – the past is over and gone.” Today is a continuation of last week, and serves symbolically as the launch of the Easter movement. Every day is, in fact, a continuation of the event we remembered last week. No low Sundays. Every morning is Easter morning.

And so we, as the Easter community, the resurrection community, the alternative community of love, will do what we do best. We will continue to rehearse the story, to live into its promise, to claim its meaning. And as we focus on Jesus, we will continue to focus on where the story focuses, on the community that emerged, a community whose progeny we are, even to this present resurrection moment.

John’s gospel leaves no room for a seven-day delay. We gather later that very evening with the community, gathered in secrecy, afraid. Jesus appears and brings them peace to meet their fear. He does it a second time, and then implores them to forgive. Peace and forgiveness as the heart of his message, in the face of fear.

But Thomas is out running an errand or something. When he returns, they tell him what has happened but he remains unconvinced. He doubts. We do not know what happened in the intervening seven days, from then to now. We do not know the state of Thomas’ spirit, or the ways that the community interacted with him or each other.

We do not know. But we do know that they stuck together, because seven days later the scene is repeated. Jesus appears, and bids them peace. Thomas believes, and Jesus offers a blessing to all who will come later, including us, about the nature of our belief.

Then, and now, the focus seems to be on the community, its very nature and its experience. Theologians and biblical scholars have spent extraordinary energy, and the church has fought great battles, over what has happened since, seeking precise explanation, shedding blood over differences. But it seems as if the community, then and now, is the best witness to resurrection, and we who stand in the long line of followers make our best witness when we let the story inhabit our lives, and then let our lives manifest the power and the hope that resurrection brings.

Marcus Borg writes that “Jesus continued to be experienced by his followers after his death as a divine reality of the present, and that such experiences continue to happen today.” (The Heart of Christianity, page 82)

In a fine little book called What Jesus Meant, Garry Wills notes that in the gospels there is no real explanation of what happened on that Easter day. He recalls N.T. Wright’s assertion that “seismic changes in the followers of Jesus” give us confidence that Jesus is risen. Without resurrection, Wills is saying, the earliest community would not have been what it was. “Yet this band of cowards,” he says (his term, not mine), “was suddenly changed into an energetic body of effective evangelists, spreading their faith, firmly offering the claim that Jesus lives.” (124-126)

At some point, when the media and pundits finish poking at the issue, trying to shed more heat than light, we will consider the implications of Barack Obama’s membership at Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the South Side of Chicago and its just-retired pastor Jeremiah Wright. Surely, 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, there are important things to say about religion and race and politics in America.

As much as anyone can judge any person’s life, let alone the content of a minister’s preaching career, by a few sound bites, then let us be careful. Surely what I’ve heard is disconcerting, but there is more to it than that. Surely I would not expect you to believe, or support, everything I say from week-to-week, though of course the context is different.

And that context is part of the point. I’ve not met Jeremiah Wright – but I’ve been to Trinity UCC, and I’ve been impressed and grateful about its witness in a very difficult Chicago context. And rather than parse and dissect more than seems helpful, I couldn’t help but remember one of my first seminary weekends, where a few of us visited another large African-American church on the Southside of Chicago. It was less political than Trinity, but no less spirited. And what struck me, aside from my own incredible Caucasian-ness, is how important religion is, and how serious the commitment is. Not just in terms of hours – no 60 minute service there – but in terms of commitment.

So you can read sermons, and analyze, and offer critique, and have debate about a very important topic. And we can explore more deeply the matters that Jeremiah Wright is raising. But rather than judge the experience, perhaps we can share the experience, we can be there, and see the power in that community, and the difference that resurrection makes in individual lives, in the life of that congregation, in the life of that very challenged community.

We look for precision and perfect explanations and understandings. But we need look no further than the star of this morning’s story to realize that is not the way it is. My friend Joanna Adams writes that she is glad there is room in the church for the “doubting Thomas sub-committee,” and that on most days, she would be a member. (“No Other Plan,” November 2007)

Thomas is us, one whose doubting, questioning, less-than-perfect understanding is not only tolerated in the community, not only welcomed in the community, but is held as a front-and-center example of what faithfulness might look like.

Ian Wallis writes that “the portrayal of Thomas… (encourages us) to discover the ‘risen’ Christ not through bodily encounter but through faith…Jesus’ continuing presence was…discerned and communicated through…the vocation to share Jesus’ faith – to participate in his spirituality, to embrace his vision of the kingdom and to engage in his pattern of ministry.” (Holy Saturday Faith, page 2)

Sandra Schneiders writes that “the resurrection narrative is not really about what happened to Jesus after his death…(but) about what happened to Jesus’ disciples …Thomas,” Schneiders writes, “representing all later disciples, first refuses to believe unless the…physical presence is restored, and then accepts Jesus’ challenge to cross over into…’believing without seeing’ or believing through the testimony of community.” (Written That You May Believe, page 58)

Believing through the testimony of community.

We spend an awful lot of time on theological matters, and to some use, I hope. We certainly spend an awful lot of time trying to understand Jesus, to state what we believe with precision and certainty. Theology matters, but as we live in and into this vision of a resurrection community, we might think for a moment about how it matters.

Our beliefs about Jesus might provide illumination, clear up confusion, serve as a kind of roadmap. But they can never replace our experience of the risen Christ, nor serve in isolation as our testimony about how the risen Christ is present in our lives and in our living.

More and more, we will pay attention not only to the 2000 years of Christian theology that considered the divinity of Christ but the last 25 years of Christian theology that have considered the humanity of Christ. More and more, we will pay attention to what theologian Karl Barth called the “eternal” nature of resurrection, an event contemporary with every believer. (See William Placher, The Triune God, page 60) More and more, we will connect this ancient story to our experiences, connecting that first community to this community, to covenant groups and youth fellowship and New Orleans work crews and women’s teas, where resurrection continues to play itself out, where every morning is Easter morning.

Theologian Scot McKnight says that we are not only to make theological statements, but we are to “perform our confession,” that theology forms and transforms each of us, all of, in community.

A woman called me this week. She may be here, in fact, and if so, we welcome you. She had read about us on our website and wanted to learn more. We had a brief conversation about some very big theological matters. And finally I said to her that as much as I can try to be articulate about what we believe, and as accurately as I can seek to describe this congregation, you would be well-served to visit us, just show up and experience. Experience this Easter community, I might have said, and see how the good news of resurrection plays itself out.

Blessed are those – blessed are we – who have not seen and yet have come to believe. And blessed is each one of us – and all of us – for this good news, whose story continues to unfold even now, where every morning IS Easter morning, and where Christ is risen indeed. Amen.