Date: 3 April 2016
Text: John 20:19-31
Site: Bethany United Church – Halifax, NS
According my dictionary an apparition is a supernatural appearance of a person or thing. I had never heard of the term apparition until I served the church in Cape Breton. Do you remember the sightings of the Virgin Mary at the local Tim Horton’s and Lick-a-Chick in Bras d'Or? Apparently people flocked to those places in hopes of seeing the Virgin Mary or Jesus or something that would validate their faith. I confess I always wondered what these believers hoped to find, hoped to see, what that vision would confirm to them?
As we enter into this season of Easter, the week after we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus to his followers, I wonder whether there would have even been a Church if all that the disciples had witnessed was an apparition. These women and men had followed Jesus for three years, they believed he was the One long promised who would usher in a new world, and seeing him after his brutal execution by the Romans would have been reassuring, they would have seen it as a sign to be sure. But a sign of what, and what claim would this apparition make on their lives? What accounts for the way this vision of the Risen Jesus changed them from people hiding behind locked doors to believers witnessing to their faith by living out their conviction that Jesus is Lord?
Lutheran Minister Brian Stoffregen of Faith Church in Arizona writes: “The purpose of this resurrection appearance is not so much to prove the resurrection, as it is to send the disciples as Jesus had been sent.” You will recall the way Jesus was sent into the world, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Jesus did not spend his time considering the apparitions of the Almighty in the mountains, in the sky, in the law. No, Jesus spent his time and his passion considering how he would live into the Holy Commission of Luke 4.
As Stoffregen says, “Easter is not just coming to a wonderful, inspiring worship service, it is being sent back into the hostile world, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to bear witness to the identity of God as revealed in Jesus.” Hear the words of our text this morning, “Peace be with you. As the God has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, Jesus breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” These followers are called and sent to take the message, the ministry, the mission of Jesus the Christ into the world with peace and the Holy Spirit as their guide and support, and participate in the creation of a new world.
A picture of the church's mission emerges. By loving one another as Jesus loves, the faith community reveals God to the world; by revealing God to the world, the church makes it possible for the world to choose to enter into relationship with this God of limitless love. I remember one of the questions the Search Committee here asked me, how my theology may have changed during these 25 years of ordained ministry. Generally my theology has remained fairly constant, it is my liturgical sensibilities that have dramatically shifted. But the one area where my theology has changed is my understanding of the mission of the Church. When I was first ordained, I would have said the Church was called to equip believers to live in the world as disciples, to make a difference, to change the world, to do as Micah 6 proclaims: to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. That is still a mission I embrace and attempt to live out, but I would now add to it that the Church is called in being the Church to be a bright beacon to the world, a witness to how the world can know love, a model of a different kind of love in a broken world.
You may recall a year ago there was a tragic shooting at a church in South Carolina. The shooter, a white man, entered a mostly African-American church for Bible Study and was warmly received and welcomed. While these believers were on their knees in prayer this man opened fire and killed 9 persons. In the aftermath of this horrendous event the church went to the courthouse and one by one, chose not to speak in anger, instead they offered him forgiveness and said they were praying for his soul, even as they described the pain of their losses. “I forgive you,” Nadine Collier, the daughter of 70-year-old Ethel Lance, said at the hearing, her voice breaking with emotion. “You took something very precious from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never, ever hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul.”
Gospel of John scholar Wes Howard-Brook in his text Becoming Children of God: John’s Gospel and Radical Discipleship writes that “the locked doors are no barrier for Jesus. Jesus’ appearance is not a matter of mysteriously passing through locked doors of a room, but of prayerfully opening the locked doors of our hearts, that allows the community to perceive the presence of the Risen One.” This is one of the reasons churches have responded so quickly to the need of sponsorship of refugees, whether they be Syrian or from other places of war and hardship.
I think it is ironic that as time has passed in my city of Halifax that the institution of the Church which used to be the source of division among families and friends, Catholic and Protestant, now is serving as a refuge to people who arrive here with no family or friends in search of authentic community. Believe me when I say to you that your greeting, your welcome, to new folk, is a matter of life and death. Friends I did not come here to be part of a renewal of Bethany or see the church restored to its past glories, I came here because I believe Jesus has come to Bethany and sent us into the world with peace and Holy Spirit to unlock the doors of our hearts so we might see the Risen One in our midst, when the stranger comes among us, when newcomer becomes sister and brother, when we come out from behind the locked doors and welcome all into the living space of the Holy Spirit.
May it be so among us, Amen!