John 20:19-31 and Acts 4:32-35 – Rev. Blake Busick – Awaken to Life

Lectionary Readings for April 11, 2021       Second Sunday Of Easter, Year B
Acts 4:32-35   v34 There were no needy people among them...
Psalm 133         v1 How wonderful and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!
1 John 1:1-2:2 v1:9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.
John 20:19-31 v21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”

Peace through Leadership Quotes

“We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining – they just shine.”  ~ Dwight L. Moody

“Resurrection does not remove suffering: it transforms it from a wall into a doorway.”  ~ Steve Garnaas-Holmes

As Christians, we believe in seeing and understanding our lives through the lens of resurrection. We believe in transformative miracles. And we believe that the future is filled with potential that requires our participation. You can shine your light with bright smiles and illuminating compliments. Sometimes that’s exactly what people need when they’re enduring the dark storms of life.

Any time I preach or lead a group, regardless of age, I start the same way. I’m going to say three short sentences. Please repeat each sentence, with enthusiasm.
God made me.           God loves me.            God has plans for me.

Preface to Today’s Scripture Reading

Last Sunday, we heard the Gospel of Mark’s Easter story of Jesus’ resurrection. Early that Sunday morning, three women went to the tomb so they could properly anoint Jesus’ body with spices and oils. After seeing an angel, they fled the empty tomb overwhelmed with a variety of emotions.

Today’s story picks up that very same night. As you can imagine, the disciples are also overwhelmed with emotions. They never expected Jesus would actually be tortured and crucified. And there’s no reason to believe they would have understood what “resurrection” meant. They also rightly feared for their lives. If the Jewish religious leaders could get the Romans to execute Jesus, would they be next? Since every person processes grief differently, you can imagine the mix of comments and feelings inside their locked room. 

And you can also imagine their shock and relief when they saw Jesus suddenly appear inside the locked room. That’s not normal. Notice that Jesus’ opening words are “Peace be with you.” Also notice that today and up to Jesus’ return to heaven, despite being tortured and executed, Jesus returned with a message of peace, faith, hope, and love. He shows no interest is exacting revenge on anyone who caused Him harm. Remarkable.

Sadly, our Christian tradition has given the disciple Thomas the negative label of “Doubting Thomas.” Keep in mind, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the first people to see Jesus were women. And when those women told the disciples about their encounter with an angel, an empty tomb, and a back-to-life Jesus, NONE of the disciples believed them... UNTIL the disciples saw Jesus themselves. Thomas was understandably skeptical, as are many of us today. Is God really present in my life? If so, show me.

John ends his gospel saying that the disciples “saw Jesus do many other miraculous signs in addition to the ones recorded.” All the undocumented people Jesus cured... All the un wisdom Jesus shared... The Gospels as we have them today are essentially a “greatest hits” biography of Jesus’ life.

Let’s open our ears, minds, and hearts as Margie shares today’s readings.

Read John 20:19-31 and Acts 4:32-35.

Greetings during this Easter season! I’m Rev. Blake Busick, the District Superintendent of the Great Northern District. It’s good to be with you.

“My Lord, and my God.” With those words, Thomas awakened to life in Jesus’s name, a life characterized by love and joy. A week earlier, he was not with the apostles when Jesus appeared to them, and they awakened to life. In fact, he doubted their experience, he thought they were seeing an illusion or living a lie. In fact, he said, “Unless I see the mark, have the nails in his hands, and put my finger in those marks, and put my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

Then a week later, he encounters Jesus, and he does awaken to life, and he realized he had it all backwards. The situation was exactly the opposite. He was the one that was not seeing reality they were. And now he was.

I think Thomas is such a great character for us today for he embodies and he exemplifies our situation in our context today as well. What often masquerades as life in our time, is also an illusion, a deception, we might even say, a lie. And when we base our lives on those illusions, it’s not life at all. And we miss out on the life that Jesus talks about, life in his name, life that’s characterized by love and joy.

Here’s what I mean; I’ll give a couple of examples.

There are three illusions that we often are tempted to embrace. One of those has to do with an illusion about ourselves. Many times, deep down, when we unmask the facades that we put up, we believe that deep down we really are not of much value or worth. That really, we feel inadequate. And there’s a couple of ways we often cope with that.

One is by trying to distract our lives from dealing with our feelings of unworthiness. And so we do things like, go from one form of entertainment to another, or eat too much, or drink too much, or take too much drugs. Or we simply just live on the surface and try to distract ourselves as much as we can through a life of pleasure, a life of running from one event to the next, whatever, in order not to deal with the deep sense of feeling inadequate and unworthy.

The other way we deal with it is by going the opposite direction and being driven. And so we’re driven to succeed, or we’re driven to get acknowledgment from others, we’re trying to prove to others, or maybe even to ourselves, that we actually are valuable. And so we’re driven to, in our work, in our success, and getting honors and titles, our money or fame, all to try to make us feel like we’re worth something. It’s an illusion, it’s a lie. It’s not in fact, the reality that God has given to us. More on that in a minute.

Another illusion we often adhere to is not about ourselves, but about others. We believe that others are not as worthy, others are not as valuable, that there are those who are us that are valuable and worthy, and there are those who are others who are not as valuable, and who are not as worthy. And we can project on them all that’s wrong with the world. We feel like they are impeding and approaching in terms of our life into our values and upsetting our way of life. And so we project onto them all that’s wrong with the world. All that’s wrong with what’s happening in our world comes crumbling down, and we’re afraid of those others. And so we often respond in fear, because we’re worthy, they’re not worthy. We don’t understand them. They don’t share our values. They’re the reasons why our world is being undermined. And when we live our lives on that illusion about others, it’s also very destructive not only to others, in terms of the privilege we might carve out for ourselves and the oppression we may carve out for them, but also for us all. We’re not living the abundant life that we might have in God’s reign and God’s kingdom.

Other illusions we have are about God. How many things in history has been done in the name of God who are horrific, who are outright just evil. And yet in the name of God, we do these things or, or sometimes illusions we have about what God thinks about others. And we pass judgment on them and, and blame them and often say, “Well, God has some judgment against you.” These are all illusions masquerading as life.

And sometimes it feels like we’re alive. Like for instance, when we are blaming others for what’s wrong in the world, we can get all worked up in our anger and our fear, and anger has a lot of energy. And when we’re angry, and when we’re fighting against somebody else, we’re united with those people who are also agree with us and it feels like we have life because there’s so much energy in it, but it’s a negative energy. It’s a destructive energy. But it masquerades as life itself.

These are illusions that Thomas, when he says, “My Lord, and my God” wakes up to and calls us to wake up as well. Now, these illusions are not harmless. Not only do they enter into our lives, some destructive things, but they, they themselves are the foundation, I’m going to say that the word E word, of evil.

Go back to the Garden of Eden with me and think about how that story in Genesis chapter three is so illuminating, to help us to understand the nature of evil that is so seductive in our lives. And the serpent approaches, Eve and then Adam – and Adam and Eve are both implicated in this – the serpent doesn’t approach them and say, “I want you to do some evil, here’s some bad things go do them.” What the serpent does is basically just tell a lie. Right? The serpent comes and says, “if you eat of the tree of the knowledge and good and evil, you will gain wisdom and you will not die. And look how good the fruit is held out, what a delight it is to the eye,” right? It’s a partial truth, but it’s a lie, and believing the lie or giving into the lie, Adam and Eve partake of this fruit and, and perpetuates a distance from God and evil that intrudes into the world.

These lies that we believe are not harmless. If I believe the lie about myself that I am worthless then I undermined my very life. If I believe the lie about other people are worthless then I am about all kinds of destruction and undermining of their lives. If I believe lies about God, then who knows what I perpetuate or allow to happen in the name of God, that is contrary to what God is all about. And the seductive thing about this is when we believe a lie, we think we’re doing good, when actually we’re perpetuating evil, destruction, things against life. This is why Jesus taught us to pray, “deliver us Lord, from evil.”

Evil doesn’t suggest something bad, and then look for bad people do it. Evil just serves up a lie. And when good people believe a lie, when they act upon it, we perpetuate the evil and destructiveness that undermines the abundant life that God has for us. Every once in a while, and we’re living within these illusions, and we think maybe we mistake them for life, we get a glimpse maybe of another alternative, we may hear something like Thomas did, he heard from his apostles, there’s another way, but we don’t believe it, we think it’s just an illusion. We think that’s just a fabrication. It’s okay for those people to believe those things, if it helps them, but we know what life’s really about. And we know how we’re supposed to survive, we just got to get used to it.

And maybe a little religion is okay to help us to cope with the struggle of the lies we’re believing. But it’s not for us, we can’t believe those illusions. They’re just helping people medicate against the harshness of what life is really about.

That’s all backwards. Like Thomas experienced, it’s the exact opposite. What we think is reality, if it’s based on a lie is not reality at all. It’s not life at all. It is itself, the death that Jesus came to overcome. And so, I’d like for us to think a little bit about what this life that Thomas entered into really is and how belief in Jesus’s name and confessing “my Lord and my God” is the way we enter into this new life. We transfer from one Kingdom, one reign, to another, from the kingdom of this world to the kingdom of God. And when we do so, a whole different world opens up to us. And we find in fact the truth about ourselves, that I am made in the image of God, I am completely and eternally loved, and therefore have eternal value and worth.

You are made in the image of God, and you are completely and eternally loved, and therefore have great value and worth. And God is a God of love, and a God of joy, of perfect love and eternal joy that overcomes evil and shatters our illusions. These are the realities to base our life on. And it changes everything when we do that. The writer of the gospel of John ends chapter 20, by saying that the gospel was written, so that we might have this life in Jesus’s name, that by believing in Jesus and confess and that He is the Son of God, and our Lord, that we find this life in His name. So to believe in Jesus, you see, as the Messiah, as the Son of God is to awaken from a world of illusions, that, if believed, create all kinds of problems in our life in the world, to awaken from that world, into the world of God’s reign, of God’s kingdom, of life, of love, of joy, that is life.

Again, our faith is not a little uplift, or encouragement, to help us deal with life’s illusions and lies that we may build our life on. It is a proclamation that shatters them. “My Lord, and my God” is a shattering confession. It is with this life altering, life changing, confession of faith, that we enter into life in all of its abundance. And it’s a life that’s characterized by love and joy. That’s how you know when you’re in it. If we go to the Acts community, in the in the book of Acts, we see that the Acts community who is awakened to this life is characterized by love and joy and fellowship with God. If your life, if my life, is characterized by fear, and alienation, and feelings of judgment towards others, and hatred and violence, then I probably haven’t awakened to the life I’m still living based on some lies, I’m believing, even if I think I’m doing good, even I think I’m doing a necessary thing, it often is something that is perpetuating the kind of the death denying life that masquerades as life.

The early Christian community that was awake, like Thomas awoke, was characterized by love, and joy. That’s how you know you’re living in that life, when it’s characterized by love and joy. And here’s the thing. There is a lot of evil and destruction that’s happening in our world. And you can’t defeat that evil and destruction with with more evil and destruction. You can’t use its weapons. You can’t use its weapons of violence or judgment or condemnation, and the like, and fear... that just enhances that destructiveness and violence, the only weapons that really defeat evil, injustice and oppression, in whatever forms they present themselves are love, and joy. That’s what Jesus showed us in His death and resurrection, in His crucifixion, and His rising from the grave is that those are God’s weapons to defeat evil: love and joy.

So when you awaken to life, in Jesus’s name, you and I are also awakening to love and joy. So awaken to love. Let’s awakened to love. We do that as we look at and meditate upon and ponder the suffering and death of Jesus. We just came out of the season of Lent. And that’s a time in which we had a time to reflect on that is the time to continue to reflect on that when you look at the cross, it’s not just a transaction that God has to deal with our sinfulness. The cross is God’s way of drawing us to God’s self. The cross is God’s way to get us to see the heart of God. When you see the cross, when you see Jesus as suffering and death, what we see there is God’s solidarity with us. There’s no suffering, there’s no pain, there’s no hardship that we ever endure, that God does not also experience. That’s the revelation of the cross. And when we understand God’s solidarity with us, we awaken to love because God’s in solidarity with us because of God’s great love for us. That’s God’s nature. That’s God’s way. To focus on the death of Jesus, the suffering and death of Jesus, and to see the cross in that light is to awaken to love. God is not just aimed at trying to convince us in our minds that God is the God of love. God is after our hearts, and God reaches our hearts, through the death of Jesus on the cross. We awaken to love when we awaken to the revelation of the cross.

Likewise, when, as Thomas says, he experienced the resurrected Jesus, when we experienced the resurrected Jesus, that He is risen, we awaken to joy. And shen we wake into love and joy, we are awakened to a God, to the very nature of God, God invites us into God’s very nature, that is eternal love and eternal joy. And in that joy, we have it because God conquers all things, God completes all things God, brings everything together. God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. That’s the promise. And that’s the reality that we’re headed towards. There’s joy in that, eternal joy. Joy comes from being in relationship with people with others. And in the resurrection, we see we have an eternal relationship with God. Therefore, we have an eternal source of joy. Love and joy, characterize an awakened life in Jesus name. And it’s not just a personal sense of fulfillment, these are forces that change the world, because these are the forces that defeat evil, injustice and oppression, in whatever forms they present themselves. We are baptized in Jesus’s name to do just that kind of work. And so, this season I invite you to join me and Thomas to awaken, awaken to Jesus awaken to love, awaken to joy. And, and let us be that community of faith that’s a transformation center for people to discover this love and joy in the cross and resurrection of Jesus. And then let’s together in this new life, change the world that God so loves, as we with Thomas continue to say, “My Lord, and my God.”

May God bless you and be with you during this Easter season.

Thanks be to God. Amen.