So what?
The
2nd Sunday of Easter
Year
B
John
20:19-31
Congregations
are oftentimes quite small around the world on Low Sunday. Will we buck the trend at Christ Church? Let’s see.
Life
carries on. Two disciples trudge along to
Emmaus speaking in hushed voices about what the women’s message about the empty
tomb could possible mean. They are
organizing their mental response, repairing their mental walls and wondering
what the “new normal” is. In the
Gospel reading this Sunday, Thomas sorts out the tumble of things in his head
in such a way that he “will believe” A, B and C and “will not believe”
X, Y and Z. Some disciples are planning a
return to Bethsaida or Capernaum in the Galilee to get their nets, weights and
floats out of hock and to recuperate earlier careers. Even those who were open to the women’s
proclamation that something remarkable had occurred in and around the
tomb of Christ might ask the seemingly irreligious and outrageous question
which positively insists on being asked here:
So what?
Did
someone win the lottery or have a patent approved for their invention? Good fortune landed on them. Well done, them. You
jot them off a message of congratulations and that would be the end of it. You ask a mutual friend whether she’d heard
how Arthur had landed on his feet. Good
for Arthur, your friend says. It
means absolutely nothing to the two of you who’ve never won anything more than
a replacement lottery ticket and have had your best ideas thoroughly ignored at
work.
Making
practical sense of the resurrection is not a topic for Easter Sunday – that’s
reserved for proclamation, invitation and positively basking in the mysterious
symbols of new life and new beginnings. It is a topic, however, for all the Sundays
prior to Pentecost so you aren’t going to avoid the issue. A post-Easter-Sunday sermon attempts to make sense
of the resurrection of Christ in some way other than “Good for Jesus”. We use Jesus’ own words to do this. His words to his disciples indicate a new
beginning for them. Both his death and
resurrection are Pro Nobis – for us and for
Creation itself and must be understood in relation to the things of earth: Money, career, beauty and justice – our
attitudes towards friends and enemies and towards our own varied estimates of our
strength or weakness, life and death.
It
is the lens through which life is focused for you who are strong and you who
are weak, who have gained much in this life or have lost a great deal, who
would apply your strength to the best of things or who want to navigate the
weakness within and around yourselves.
It means something – this sharing with Christ in his victory over sin and
death. Life takes on new meaning in the
light of Easter. There remains much time
in your three-score-years-and-ten for this to be worked out for you as it was
worked out for the disciples in conversation with their Lord in the days after
Easter Sunday.
We begin (again) on
Sunday. If you are not elsewhere – I look
forward to seeing you.
