Resurrection Breaks Through
(Free Version) Eastertide (Year A)- Acts 2:14a,22-32; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
Hello friends, Christ is risen!
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You can find this week’s readings here.
A few years ago, my family and I moved into a house that had just been remodeled. In my view, everything was just perfect. So, whenever my wife, Ashley, wants to do something to the house—even something small like painting a door or a wall—my unfortunate response is: “I just don’t want to mess it up.”
The same is true with the garden. My fear is always, if we plant something, we have to maintain it or it will get overgrown and look tacky. Better just not plant anything.
The truth is that gardens are hard work. And gardens are worth it. Anything that we plant of beauty may not always do what we want it to do: we thought we might have fungus, then a nitrogen deficiency. But it is important to cultivate beauty.
In our Acts reading (Acts 2:14a, 22-32), Peter declares that God has acted decisively in the death and resurrection of Jesus. In him we see true beauty, the promise of God fulfilled in his people. This is evident in the simple boldness of Peter who, not long before, failed to admit to a servant girl that he had given his life to followed Jesus. Now, something has changed. And, it is only an act of God, who has not abandoned his people but has been faithful in the Messiah. And we are a community to witness to the resurrection.
In our epistle reading, we get more Peter (1:3-9), who extols that God has given us new birth through the resurrection of Jesus. This is not just an individual experience, but we are born into a living hope. This is only the act of God. We do not have to trust in ourselves (even our own ability to trust!). Because he is working in us the salvation of our soul, we can rejoice in God’s work now and in the inheritance that awaits us, even as we face suffering. God does not cause our suffering, but, in the Christian, suffering has the effect of refining our faith and causing us to shine.
Our gospel reading (John 20:19-31), tells of the appearance of the Risen Christ to the disciples. He shows them His scars and He breathes on them the Holy Spirit. These become the defining elements of the church. We are a people of scars and of the Spirit. The presence of the Spirit is marked by forgiveness. More than anything, the Church carries forgiveness.
Jesus never disparages Thomas for asking to see. There is faith that comes from seeing, and there is faith that comes from trusting. Both are true faith. For those, like us, who trust in a story, we need the blessing of God to sustain our trusting even when we are unable to touch the scars. In doing so, we bring our own scars and to sit with others in suffering and pain.
I have always loved the image of the church as gardens of resurrection in a land of death. For a few years, our church met in a downtown shopping area, where there is concrete outside as far as the eye can see. I liked to describe our church as the flowers that break through the sidewalk reminding the world of new life.
We are the people who live resurrection when everything else is bent against it. And that’s messy. Church people often do dumb stuff! We have nitrogen deficiency and fungus. This happens because when we are not fully who we are created to be. But we also bloom. In a cynical world focused only on pain, or else a triumphalist world that says pain is not real, the Church bears the world’s scars. Pain is real and there is more to the story. In an independent world, the Church says that we need God and we need each other. And in a vengeful world bent on payback, the Church says, “You are forgiven.” May we remember who we are, may we live as resurrection people.