Entangled States

In this week’s reading, which follows directly after last week’s Gospel, Jesus reassures the disciples that, even though he is leaving them, his teaching and his Spirit will remain with them. That Spirit — working in them — will fulfill what they lack. The Advocate, the one who will speak on their behalf in moments of judgment and inspire their speech in times of testing, will lead them more deeply into the truth of God’s love and God’s will for the world.

We will hear much more about the work of that Spirit in a few weeks. But for this moment, I want to emphasize what Jesus is telling his disciples as he bids them farewell just before his suffering: If you do what I do, Jesus says, you are doing God’s will. If you do God’s will, you will have the power you have seen in me — and that power can change the world. Not by doing self-serving miracles, but by changing the nature of human relationships.

Remember what Jesus taught them one last time at that meal as a sort of summary of all that he had done with them during his earthly ministry. He washes their feet. It is what we reenact on Maundy Thursday, and it is the act that continues to make us uncomfortable — and part of the reason I think attendance at that service has been declining over the years. To love God is to love Jesus. To love Jesus is to do what Jesus does. Jesus humbles himself, even taking on the role of a servant, a slave, to wash the dirt off our feet. To love Jesus is to do the same for the people around us.

If you are unhappy with the way things are in your life — if you are frustrated by the way things happen in our community — if you despair when you watch the national news — then you should know that there is something you can do that will begin to change things and make them better. You can love your neighbor just as Jesus did. You can serve them and put their best interest ahead of your own. And in doing that you will change them, and you will change your relationship with them, and you will change the world.

The disciples, after the Passion and the Resurrection and the Ascension, did exactly that. Empires fell. How we think about ourselves and each other has never been the same.

And what is remarkable is how this pattern keeps repeating itself throughout history. In moments of despair and confusion — moments not entirely unlike our own — someone rises up and shows the rest of us what it looks like to love God by loving the way Jesus loved.

(It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been able to find the time to record and post my Sunday sermons. I’ve been preaching – many times a week over the past month or so – but between meetings and travel, I’ve just not been able to squeeze in the time to record, edit and post. I’m hoping I’ll get back on track again, but in the meantime, please accept my apologies.)

You can view the sermon recording here.

Jesus’ resurrection and our atonement with God leads us to recognize that we are reconciled not just to God but to each other as well. And more than that — it isn’t simply a remaking of our personal relationships. The Easter event is the foundation for a new way of living in community. It begins a process, still ongoing, of moving us from a world ordered around the way of the Ruler of this World to one in which the Reign of God is made increasingly manifest.

You can sense this by hearing the words Jesus speaks to the disciples in the Upper Room, and to Thomas himself, in light of an earlier moment in the Gospel accounts: the sending of the seventy-two to proclaim that the Kingdom of God has come near.

What Jesus has those disciples do closely parallels the proclamations made regularly by Roman Emperors. But Jesus changes one crucial element, and that change points to an alternate reality that is slowly dawning.

You can watch the sermon by using this link.

When we have completely given up, God has not. God acts and out of the darkness, new light bursts forth. Easter is the proof that death and despair do not win in the end.

Here is something we easily forget about Easter morning: nobody was expecting it.

The women walking to the tomb in the dark were not going to witness a resurrection. They were going to finish a burial. They carried spices. They were already wondering aloud who would roll the stone away. Their category for what was about to happen did not exist. It wasn’t something that they could anticipate. None of Jesus’ followers did – even though he had told them.

The disciples hiding behind locked doors were not waiting for news of an empty tomb. They were waiting for the knock that would mean the authorities had come for them next.

Even those who had heard Jesus speak of rising on the third day had apparently filed that away as metaphor or misunderstood it entirely. Because when the news came, nobody said: yes, of course, just as he said. They said: this cannot be. Mary Magdalene’s first instinct was that someone had moved the body. The disciples on the road to Emmaus were walking away from Jerusalem — the direction of defeat and resignation.

What this means is that the resurrection was not wish-fulfillment. It was not the disciples’ grief generating a vision that matched their hopes. It shattered their categories rather than confirming them. Nobody was primed for it. Nobody produced it. Nobody even asked for it in quite that form.

God acted. Unilaterally. In history. In a way that required nothing from those first witnesses except that they be present to receive it, and even then, they barely could.

You can view the sermon here.