This past Tuesday
I caught the end of one of the newer series on T.V. I haven't
seen it often and I only caught about the last half of "Judging
Amy," but it had a very provocative story line. For those
of you not up on T.V. Judging Amy is about a young woman Amy who
is a judge in family court. She seems to be genuinely concerned
for justice and for the families and children she deals with.
In this episode one of her good friends, a woman judge, is diagnosed
with cancer. From what I gather this diagnosis causes her to return
to the religion she grew up with. Amy struggles with the fact
that her friend has "gotten religion." She discusses
it with the clerk, who works with her and finds out, surprisingly,
that he also "has religion", that indeed he attends
mass weekly. Amy is taken aback by that knowledge and gently belittles
what she clearly does not understand. He takes their conversation
a bit deeper finding out that her family never was more a part
of a church than stopping in at Christmas and Easter and even
that connection slowly slipped away. She knows and understands
nothing really about faith so the clerk invites her to "come
and see." At that point she is just not ready for that kind
of a step.
What intrigued me about the portrayal was how very accurate it
is to our current cultural situation. Amy is a good, thoughtful,
caring individual but she looks at religion as something for the
goody two shoes or less contemporary people. She has no concept
of what faith is about. These kind of encounters in our daily
lives have to make us wonder - Are we nuts? Are we truly goody
two shoes, are we unenlightened? Are we worshiping an apparition,
a ghost?
That's what intrigued me about our gospel lesson for today. This is one of eleven appearance stories. Though the gospel writers imply that there were other appearances, only these are recorded. (We'll be talking about the others in the adult forum this morning.) Each time Jesus becomes visible after the resurrection has some similarities and some differences. The thing that is so important in this appearance is that Jesus wants to make it clear that he is not a ghost.
Now we have all kinds of associations with what a ghost is. A
ghost is an apparition, a figment of our imaginations, a restless
spirit trying to settle an old score with someone among the living.
Jesus wants to make it very clear to the disciples that he is
none of these. Jesus wants to make it very clear to the disciples
then and to us, the disciples now, that he is real. Jesus resurrection
is not a fluky phenomenon, a curiosity, an oddity but that the
resurrection is powerful and pivotal and empowering. Jesus' appearances
are meant to quell the fears and the doubts of the disciples and
they are meant to quell our fears and doubts so that we can begin
living in a different way.
Now when Jesus appears to the disciples he says "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?" He confronts those fears and doubts in three ways. It is intriguing to me that our worship each and every Sunday repeats these three assurances in very real ways.
First of all he shows them his hands and feet. There would be nail holes in those hands and feet. They would be a very real reminder of the suffering and death that Jesus had gone through. Resurrection does not come without crucifixion. We are not worshiping one who has not been through the very real struggles and hurts and fears that we have. Religious people do not ignore reality. They do not pretend in some Polly-Anna way that the world is all peaches and cream, that if we just pretend hard enough all our problems will disappear. I think people who are unfamiliar with the faithful sometimes think that. Perhaps they see church gatherings as a bunch of people who either think themselves better than everyone else or who are truly hypocrites. The honestly faithful are clear on the message that we are a gathering of sinners who seek to be forgiven, of wounded who seek to be made whole. Why else would our worship begin with the confession, our acknowledgment that we are less than perfect, that we often miss the mark. We don't check real life at the door and play about in pretense here. We recognize that families have problems, that relationships are often strained and can be broken. We are people who know that sickness is not a personal weakness, a punishment or a failure. Illness, mental or physical is part of life, a part of the evil in life that we must use all our resources to combat and overcome. We are a people who know that there is injustice in the world and that it is pervasive, and challenging it can be complicated and frustrating and demoralizing. We are a people who know that there is hunger and want in the world. Jesus shows us his wounds so that we will know that the wounded are welcome here.
The second way that Jesus confronts the question of his reality is I think almost comical, "Have you anything here to eat?" It's a well-known fact that apparitions don't eat, that spirits don't need nourishment or sustenance. When Jesus appears to the disciples he seeks their recognition by doing the thing that they had so often done together before--sharing a meal. And they give him broiled fish, commonplace, ordinary. Jesus doesn't require some special heavenly diet, but eats with the disciples what is readily available to them. Just so when Jesus comes to us in the sacrament of Holy Communion we use ordinary bread and wine. Perhaps those who are unfamiliar with the faith see this as some cannibalistic ritual or some magical event, but our faith does not invest itself in the strange or perverse. Jesus wants to share a meal with his followers, wants to eat with us. Jesus is really present, not a ghost or apparition, when the bread and wine are blessed and given to us as Jesus real presence (body and blood).
Thirdly and lastly Jesus seeks to quell the fears and doubts of his disciples by "opening their minds to understand the scriptures." This is no more or less than the thing we seek to do in each and every worship service. We read the lessons, we hear a sermon, we laugh with the children's sermon which I have been told is perhaps more mind opening than the other sermon. Over the years we end up listening to these same lessons dozens and dozens of times but we wait for our minds to be opened to hearing them. Jesus says that the words he is sharing with the disciples are the things he spoke to them while he was with them. He told them that the Messiah is to suffer and die and rise on the third day but they did not understand it. Sometimes it takes the right circumstances to hear what Jesus has been trying to tell us all along. Sometimes we need to just wait until the right time to get Jesus full meaning. We come to worship each week to give Jesus the opportunity to open our minds to the words he has shared with us a hundred times before. Because these words are not just some moldy old book that we have to blow the dust off of before we open it, no these are the words of life itself, they are the words of the living Christ speaking to us in our day and our time.
So today Jesus comes to us and asks "Why
are you frightened and why do doubts arise in your hearts,"
And we, this Sunday May 7, 2000 see Jesus wounds, share in his
meal and hear his words for Jesus is not a ghost but truly present
with us. With that assurance, with that confidence we are witnesses
called to proclaim his name to all nations.