12 step eucharist and Jackson Kemper

Jackson Kemper

May 24, 2017 First 12 step Eucharist at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

 Today at our first 12 step Eucharist at St. Mark’s we also remember Jackson Kemper, the first missionary bishop of the Episcopal Church. Kemper is especially known for his work with Native Americans as he founded parishes in what was considered the Northwest Territory (Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Nebraska). Bishop Kemper founded Nashotah House and Racine College in Wisconsin, and from 1859 until his death served as the first bishop of the Diocese of Wisconsin.

I think that Jackson Kemper, our church’s first missionary bishop. would like our first 12 step Eucharist to be on the day we honor him. I think he would also like the reading from Corinthians, “I laid a foundation, and someone else is building.”  That is a good definition of 12-step work. When we are in recovery, we tell our story, our foundation, but so often we are only planting a seed, and those still in their addiction, may not start to build their recovery until they also hear someone else. I can count on my hands the number of people I have told my story to who then went into recovery, but I know the others may hear the message later from someone else and together our stories may make an impact.

 This Eucharist with the 12 steps is showing us how the foundation of AA came from the church, actually from an Episcopal priest at Calvary Episcopal Church in New York City, Sam Shoemaker.  One of the most spiritual experiences I have had was attending Shoemaker’s church and being part of a 12-step meeting in the space that once was his office. I imagined all those, but particularly Bill Wilson who worked on the 12 steps with him in that office.

  So many of us heard all these steps growing up in our religious traditions, but somehow, we missed important parts of them. We had to see this way of life with the new glasses in a community of others who had traveled the same road that we did. Then at some point, we had another moment of clarity as we realize the 12 steps are part of our tradition of our church all along. So, we are all now in the right place, exactly where we should be this evening as we celebrate and give thanks for the miracle of our recovery, we give thanks for all who gave and continue to give us the foundation for recovery, and we give thanks for St. Mark’s for supporting recovery ministries.

Joanna Seibert

Jackson Kemper

Samuel Shoemaker

Absence of God

Easter 5A John 14: 1-14 Absence of God

Holy Spirit, Gulf Shores May 14, 2017 Mother’s Day

“I go to prepare a place for you.. so that where I am there you may be also.”/ Jesus’ followers are confused. As we try to understand what it was like for the disciples, let’s imagine on this Mother’s Day that we are back in the house we grew up in maybe at age five or six.  We are playing on the floor with a brother or sister or best friend, only to look up and see our Mother and Father or older sibling putting on their coats. Children always have three questions. “Where are you going? Can we go? Then who will stay with us?’/ Jesus, in the role of a parent or older sibling, responses, “I am going to my Father and your Father. You cannot come now; you can come later./ But in the next verses he says, “I will not leave you orphans.” I will send another friend, another helper who will never leave, but who will stay with you forever.”//

The disciples knew Jesus was more than the son of Mary and Joseph, more than a carpenter. His character, his words, how he spoke, his work, the way he behaved, /made them believe that when they were in his presence they were closer to the presence of God.

He didn’t shine in the night, he didn’t dress in unusual clothes, he didn’t have a strange look on his face, he didn’t go around saying a lot of religious things all the time. It is just who he was and what he did and the way he related to people that caused them to say, “He is connecting us to God.”

I am sure each of you has known a person like that, a person who, when you are in his or her presence, you think better thoughts, live a better life, reflect on God, become more devotional, more spiritual. Perhaps your mother was like this. Multiply that by many million times and you have Jesus of Nazareth.

The painful side of seeing God in Jesus is that just as Jesus came into the world, he had to return to God. During his brief life here on earth, he bonds with many people, family, disciples, Mary, Martha,  Lazarus. Toward the end of his life, he tells them, “I don’t call you servants anymore, I call you ‘friends.’” The plain fact is that the deeper the bond, the more painful the absence will be.

All the years I taught medical students, residents, and fellows, I never liked graduations because of the hypocrisy of saying, “Congratulations on finishing.” Even after 40 years, I still miss many of them.  I teared up and felt the same loss at each Cathedral School, and now the Day School graduation in Little Rock./ The deeper the bond, the deeper the pain.

Two young girls are friends, next-door neighbors since they are three. They play together, sleep in each other’s bed, eat at each other’s table. Now they are ten. One of the girl’s parents is transferred to Dallas. Suddenly the ugliest thing in the world, a big moving van is out front hauling them away./ The deeper the bond, the more painful the absence./

I also know that people in a congregation like Holy Spirit can have such a deep bond that they miss each other when they are absent.  On Saturday night, as I say my prayers, I picture the congregation where I am serving in my mind and visualize where everyone sits. On Sunday morning when I look out, if this one or that one is absent, I assume they must be sick and try to call during the week to see how they were feeling. I sincerely believe that Christian people have a bond so deep that if one person is absent, others feel something missing. I also realize that church sometimes is something people just fit in among the many things in their lives, and somehow our sense of bond and community slips away.  Even so on Sunday morning as I look out and see that such and such a person is not here, that old feeling comes back. It’s like being a child;/ the deeper the bond, the greater the pain.

This pain of absence is intensified if the absence is death, as in the case of Jesus. Death makes absence seem final. Death does not care about age. You do not have to be elderly to face death. Death comes in the rain and wind of our violent Arkansas storms and tornadoes and causes trees to crash on young mothers and children and rivers to flood. Death whirls in the hurricanes that love to visit this Pleasure Island,/

Absence is also more painful when we consider the way someone dies. Students are killed in their classrooms in Jonesboro, Littleton, Sandy Hook, Blacksburg. Senseless. I think of Jesus, snatched away from his friends and family.  They strip him naked as vulgar-mouthed soldiers, unbelievers walk by and mock him.

Jesus knew the depth of pain created by absence, so in John 15 he becomes a counselor, mother, father, older sibling to his friends. He is trying to soften the blow, trying to get them ready./ He says, “I know I’m leaving. Listen. Trust in God and trust in me. I am going, it is true but am going to prepare a place for you, so that we will all be together forever. I will also send another counselor that will guide and help you and will never ever leave you.” Jesus is trying to get them and us ready for his absence, but they and we are still confused,/ still asking questions. “We don’t know where you are going or how you are going to get there. We don’t understand anything you are saying. Just show us God, and we will be satisfied.”/

It didn’t work; it never works at the time. Jesus tries to get them ready, but you can talk and talk and talk and there is still the pain. Jesus leaves his disciples and they feel his absence keenly and painfully. It just never seems to work until later./

My experience is that each of us has felt God’s absence, that feeling that God has withdrawn from us, that feeling that God is no longer close to us. The Psalms are full of prayers to God, “Lord, don’t turn your back on us. Don’t hide your face from us.” The people in the Hebrew Bible have felt it. Jesus knows it. “My God, my God why have your forsaken me?”// Is it possible that in times that God seems absent and we feel all on our own/ that we have an opportunity to use and develop strength God has already given us?

I know of a handicapped child with no arms. He tells the story of how his mother always dresses him. One day, she puts his clothes in the middle of the floor and says, “Dress yourself.” He says, “I can’t dress myself.” She says, “You have to dress yourself.” He kicks, screams, yells at his mother, “you don’t love me anymore.” After hours of struggle he gets the clothes on. As he opens his door, he sees his mother on the other side of the door/ sobbing./

I don’t believe that God grows distant from us. My experience is that God is always on the other side of the door./  I do believe that sometime we feel distance, but God is still there.//

 How do we manage this feeling and live with the perceived experience of distance from God? I think it is a matter of memory. Remember the spirit filled times, what you have been taught. Remember when you felt God’s presence, perhaps here in this church. Remember the liturgy, the worship, the Eucharist. Remember your baptism, the baptism of your child, or grandchild. Remember your Christian friends. Remember the old songs, familiar prayers that perhaps your mother or grandmother taught you./ I remember an old friend who lived with cancer for over twenty years telling me how he would recite the Te Deum, a song of praise from Morning Prayer to feel God’s presence and live through unfavorable medical reports. /

 It grieves me to think of people, especially our young, who do not know a hymn, a single scripture verse, who have never sat next to the strong shoulder of a believing man or woman. How will they ever make it? You see, what we do here on Sunday in case you are wondering, is making memories. What happens today will be the food we will have on those difficult days, food for us, and food to share with those who do not have these memories. But it will be enough. This is Jesus’ promise. It will always be more than enough.

Fred Craddock, “The Absence of Christ,” Cherry Log Sermons, pp. 54-59.

Fred Craddock, “More Than Anything in the World,” in The Preaching of Jesus, William Brosend, pp. 64-67.

The road to Emmaus, the road we all have travelled

Easter 3A Road to Emmaus, A road we all have travelled

Luke 24:13-35

April 30, 2017, Trinity Searcy

Jesus does not appear to everyone before he ascends into heaven, which leaves plenty of first century Christians as well as all of us/ to listen to stories of those who were there/ and decide what life is like in the resurrection. We base our decision about resurrection on these stories/ as well as our own encounter today with the risen Christ. The question always is,/ exactly where is Jesus’ address?

Today we find Jesus somewhere on a road between here and Emmaus. Luke is the only writer sharing with us what happened on that road,/ but all of us here have walked that road at one time or another. It is the road we walk when we are trying to get away from reality, trying to deal with something very difficult that is happening in our lives, something beyond our control.  It is the road we walk when our team loses,/ our candidate is defeated,/ we lose our job,/ our children leave home, our grandchildren move to another state, or our loved one dies. This is the long road back to that empty house, the piles of unopened mail, to life as usual, if life can ever be usual again. It is the road of deep disappointment,/ and walking it is the living definition of sad.///

In today’s story, we know one of the disciples on the road is Cleopas. Is the other disciple possibly a woman, Mary the wife of Cleopas whom John tells us was with her sister Mary at the cross? That would make them part of Jesus’ family, /and yet they do not recognize Jesus./ The Emmaus Walk takes us two hours to go those seven miles as we relive and process with the disciples the trial, crucifixion,/ and  this rumored resurrection.  Suddenly, a stranger appears. Actually, the Greek word is “resident alien,” someone very different coming up from behind asking, “what are you talking about.” We answer, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know what has happened?” Have we played this scene before?/ After a very close friend or family member dies, we meet someone who has not heard. We want to say, “Are you the only one who does not know that my husband has died?”// 

Back on the road, we hear we had hoped he would redeem Israel, but now there is no more hope. He died. Suddenly our new walking companion no longer remains an active listener. “How foolish, and how slow of heart!” he tells us. “If we had read our Bibles, none of this would come as a surprise to us. What happened to Jesus is right there in black and white. Soon it will be in red. The scriptures tell us that our Messiah, does not win the power struggle; he loses it.  Christ is not the undefeated champion. He is the suffering servant, the broken one, who comes into his glory with his wounds still visible. These hurt places are the proof that Jesus is who he says he is. We will recognize our God and his followers not by their muscles but by their scars. /

This mean that we interpret the painful parts of our lives in a new light. This mean we should no longer see our defeats as failures. This mean we should no longer fear our enemies, not even fear death itself// This may mean we are to follow our leader sometimes into the scariest, more dangerous places in the world armed with nothing but a small black bag or maybe a first-aid kit, because we are like him, not fighters, but physicians,/ and  all of us are wounded healers, whose credentials, our diplomas, are our own hurt places.//

Starting with Moses and working his way through the prophets, this stranger reveals a story told over and over in scripture of how God redeems us in our brokenness. We are wounded, but the stranger is telling us that maybe we are not losers. Maybe the rumors are true. Maybe our hope that was crucified will be transformed and resurrected.

All too soon as the scriptures have come alive we reach our destination, but we will not let the stranger go. “Stay, please, stay with us.” We invite him in to our home, our food, our table, but when the four of us sit down together, it is he, the guest, who acts as host, who reaches out, takes the bread, says the blessing, breaks the bread, and gives it to us. Maybe it is the oddness of the act that causes us to put on a new pair of glasses to see for the first time that this is the Christ, a member of our family. Maybe it is the familiarity of the act. We have seen him do this before on a green hillside with five loaves and two fish and in an upper room with unleavened bread and Passover wine.  We have a moment of clarity/…and then he vanishes. //

Our blindness and the blindness of the two disciples will never keep Christ from coming again and again to them and to us. Christ does not limit his post-resurrection appearances to those with full confidence in him. He comes especially to the disappointed, the doubtful, the dispondent. He comes to those of us who do not know our Bibles as well as we should. He comes to us who do not recognize him even when he walks right beside us, even when he is a member of our own family./ He comes to us when we have given up and are headed back home.

Jesus seems to prefer working with broken people, with broken dreams, in a broken world. If someone hands him a whole loaf of bread, he takes it, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it, and he does the same thing with his own body. That is the way of life Jesus has come to show us: to take what we have been given, to bless it, to say thank you for it, whether it is the sweet satisfying bread of success or the tear-soaked bread of sorrow, and then to share our story in community.

Beginning to end, Luke’s story of what happens on the road to Emmaus is a perfect address book for finding the risen, the living Christ. Two people in distress intimately share their story with each other, and then they openly share their story with an interested stranger. They are then open to hearing what the scripture says from someone with a different pair of glasses. They then insist on sharing what sustenance, what food they have with the stranger. Fellowship, hospitality, word, and sacrament. These are all the ways Christ has promised to be present with us, all of which happen to be the everyday activities of this church. Not the building, or institution, but the people of God—us—who attend to one another, to strangers, to God’s word, to the sacraments as a way of life.

I know that each of you here, like Cleopas and his wife Mary have experienced how the hearing of the word and the breaking of bread at the eucharist at the church can break you right open. Sometimes you are right in the middle of it when suddenly tears start. It is like the gates to your heart open and everything you ever loved comes tumbling out to be missed and praised and mourned and loved some more. It is like being in the presence of God. One moment you see Jesus and the next you do not. One moment your eyes are opened and you recognize the risen Christ, and the next he vanishes from your sight.

Take heart. This is no ghost. Do not fear. You cannot lose him. This is one of the places he has promised to be at the church, and this is the place he returns to meet us again and again.

 Risen Lord, be known to us at this moment,  in the hearing of your word and in the breaking of the bread…. and as we depart from this place, also be known to us in the stranger /whom we will meet/ on this road back home.

Barbara Brown Taylor, “Blessed Brokenness,” Gospel Medicine, pp. 19-23.

Jake Owensby, “Lessons from a Condemned Man’s Last Meal,” Looking for God in Messy Places,  April 29, 2017

funeral sermon She died in her 95th years Eleanor Colaianni

Funeral Eleanor Colaianni

April 28, 2017, St. Mark’s Emmaus Luke 24: 13-31

“O God of grace and glory, we remember before you this day our sister, Eleanor. We thank you for giving her to us,..to know and to love as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage. Amen”1

This morning as we carry the ashes of Eleanor Colaianni in and out of this sacred space, we are sacramentally carrying her back to God. We know she is already with God, but this funeral liturgy allows us in effect to shout out a prayerful petition to God, “God, get ready! Here comes Eleanor! A sinner of your redeeming, and a lamb of your own flock. You have given her to us, and now with gratitude for the gift of her life, we are returning her to you.” Our prayers are like prayers with the offering, “We give thee but thine own,” except in this case the offering is not money but the life of one we love.2

Eleanor died late in the evening of the second Sunday in the Easter season. That Sunday we heard how Christ in the resurrected life continues to come to all of us over and over again in community through locked doors and windows. In two days we will hear again the gospel Danny just read about two disciples leaving Jerusalem after Jesus’ death to go back home to Emmaus away from the trauma they experienced/ who meet Jesus on the road but do not recognize him. This morning we all as well are friends walking the road to Emmaus, coming to St. Mark’s, trying to find a safe place to process the long life and death of our dearly beloved friend. Like those on the road, we want to talk to each other about our friend, Eleanor, who touched so many lives.

It is indeed an early Christian tradition to tell stories about the one who died as her body is on its pilgrimage to its final burial place. We tell stories because Christians believe that death changes/ but does not destroy. Death is not the period at the end of a sentence, but more like a comma where Eleanor in death enters a new relationship with God AND a new relationship with us. Our experience is that God does not give us a loving relationship like hers and then let it stop abruptly with death. The relationship is still there/ but in some different form. We tell stories about Eleanor to continue that relationship as we see through the prism of her life, both in glad and sorrowful memories, refractions of the grace and love of God.

Eleanor died in her 95th year. I invite you to go back in your imagination to that date July 4, 1921, the day Eleanor was born on our nation’s 145th birthday. Eleanor indeed believed that our whole country celebrated her birthday each year as well.  The first World War had barely ended two and ½ years earlier on November 11th. The 19th amendment, allowing women to vote was ratified just a year earlier in August 1920. Eleanor was eight when the stock market crashed on October 29, 1929. She was 20 years old when World War II started on December 7, 1941. She was 31 when this church, St. Mark’s was founded on the Feast of Epiphany, January 6, 1952. In fact, Eleanor and her family were almost founding members of St. Mark’s joining in 1955 when St. Mark’s moved into the Wilcox Building. She joined the St. Mark’s choir the next year, serving faithfully for over 53 years in the soprano section.

Colaianna in Arkansas means music,/ and Eleanor was a huge part of that tradition,/ singing in the St. Mark’s choir,/ playing and teaching piano and playing the bassoon in the symphony. One of her favorite composers was Chopin, whose music Tim played today.

As you have heard from her granddaughters, we will so miss our friend.

Do our Anglican tools of scripture, tradition, and reason help us at all in processing this long life/ and now Eleanor’s physical departure from us, always too soon?

What does Scripture tell us about death? The New Testament describes how Jesus wept at the death of his friend Lazarus. Our mentor is telling us that weeping is what we should do. At his own death Jesus asks God, “God where are you?” He is telling us that doubting, arguing, feeling abandoned are feelings just as Christian as feeling held in God’s arms. Today we hear part of the Easter story. We know in our minds that Eleanor is now experiencing resurrection, but there is a part of our hearts that still wants her here with us physically to tell us in her very subtle way what we need to be doing and how much she loves us.

What does our Tradition tell us about death? There are many sermons and writings by people in our tradition who also have experienced the death of someone they dearly loved. Karl Barth, Friedrich Schleiermacher, William Sloane Coffin Jr, and John Claypool all preached about the death of close family members.  All of these towers of faith were shaken to their roots. As they looked for hope, they wrote profusely and vividly about what did not help them in their grieving. One of the universal dead end theologies for these preachers was the often-quoted phrase that the death of someone like Eleanor’s was God’s will. This is not the God of my understanding, and it was not theirs.  After the death of his son in a car accident when the car went off a bridge into the water, William Sloane Coffin preaches, “my own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that my son die; as the waves closed over his sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.” I know this family felt God’s heart and presence with them as they lovingly surrounded Eleanor this weekend around her hospital bed in ICU.

All of these preachers finally do find comfort in scripture, but it is different scripture for each of them and not the usual one-liners that we all try to say to comfort one another. I think Eleanor would tell us to read and look for it, but the words will be different for each of us, but God will speak to us just as he did on the road to Emmaus when “he interpreted the things about himself in all the scriptures.”3

And so what does our reason tell us about death, which includes what is our own experience about grief and death?  Just like Jesus on the road to Emmaus, our loved ones who have died are not only in a new relationship to God but also to us. We may only recognize their presence at certain times.  Death changes but does not destroy our communion with the saints, those we love. We all have shared experiences of knowing the presence of loved ones after they died, doing things we knew we never had been able to do before because of some presence very near to us guiding, still caring for us. The Hebrew Bible or Old Testament gives us a wonderful description of this experience. As Elijah is about to die, he asks his beloved companion, Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha responds, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” Elijah says, “You have asked a hard thing.” You know the story. As Elijah ascends in a whirlwind into heaven, he leaves for Elisha his mantle or shawl. That will also be our experience. Eleanor has left us a mantle that all of us here will be wearing, carrying with us. Eleanor like Jesus is resurrected and will be with us always throughout all eternity. Her presence no longer depends on time and space.

When our loneliness is so deep that we cannot see or feel anything else, our reason, our experience, our tradition, our scripture tells us that though our pain is true, it is not the ultimate truth, Beyond all our pain is the beauty, truth, and love of God in Jesus Christ, which never dies,

 that love which surrounds us with all the saints, who are with us throughout all eternity.

 And so finally today our scripture is offering for members of Eleanor’s family and her friends an image/ to hold onto/ as we process her death. The image will be a road,/ the road to Emmaus,/ the road we travel when our loneliness is great,/ because we will so miss the person who taught us about unconditional love,/ but… suddenly at some time, like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus,/ the one they thought they had lost /is there by their side,/  with Jesus and all the saints with her. Sometimes he/they/she may be difficult to recognize. But we will know them when we invite them in/ by saying that prayer Eleanor so often heard at the closing of the many Evensongs she sang with this choir, “Lord, Jesus, stay with us /for evening is at hand/ and the day is past; be our companion in the way,/ kindle our hearts/ and awaken hope,/ that we may know you as you are revealed in scripture/ and the breaking of bread./ Grant this for the sake of your love.”4,5 Amen.

1Burial II, BCP 493

2Thomas Long, “O Sing to Me of Heaven: Preaching at Funerals,” Journal for Preachers, 21-26, vol. 29, no. 3, Easter 2006.

3Jeffrey J. Newlin, “Standing at the Grave,” This Incomplete One, pp. 121-130.   

4Gary W. Charles, “The E Prayer,” Journal for Preachers, 47-50, vol. 29, no. 3, Easter 2006.

5Evening Prayer II, BCP 124.

A Different Thomas

Easter 2B St. Mark’s April 23, 2017Thomas John 20:24-28

What a privilege to be at St. Mark’s on the Day School Sunday. I have fallen in love with each of these amazing children and feel it a privilege to be with them at chapel and share a story with them. So today in their honor, I would also like to tell you a story. Every second Sunday in the Easter Season we hear about Thomas, affectionately called doubting Thomas. However, I would like to share a different story about Thomas given to me by Herbert O’Driscoll1. Let’s walk into this gospel and imagine we are Thomas to see if we might hear another story./

You are in a strange city. You are not a city person. Your world is the countryside, the lake far away to the north. You followed someone you loved and admired/ and worshipped him, but now that person is dead. His death has been very public and political, and you know nothing about politics.

You have no family or friends here in the south. You are on the run and have no place to go.  Soon, people will again be out in the streets as the Sabbath ends. You will become more exposed because it is obvious from your speech and clothes that you are a stranger from the north. As you wander aimlessly, you realize that the person who is the reason for your predicament is lying dead in a borrowed grave less than a mile away, and you do not dare go near there. You have already risked your life for him. When Jesus decides to come south to the home of Mary and Martha after Lazarus died, you are the one who blurted out, “Let us also go, that we may die with him,”./

Wait,/ there is one place that may be safe. You remember the upper room in the house where you shared a meal the night before last?  It is the one place known to all of you, the one place where you are most likely to find the others./ Yet, you cannot make yourself go there.

You realize you don’t want their company right now. You have come to see every one of them in their utter humanity. The ox-like dullness of Peter, impetuous, loud-mouthed, unreliable,/ the crass self-interest of James and John, the sheep-like passivity ofthe rest, their inability to grasp anything of the vision Jesus offered and lastly there is that utter treachery of Judas Iscariot. Judas is your name as well, but people have nicknamed you The Twin to distinguish you from him. Disgusting, even your name is disgusting! Everything about you and your group is disgusting. You cannot help but remember the cause you gave yourself totally to which transformed your life, giving it purpose and meaning. You had such great hope for it all. In giving yourself to it, you now find yourself, and all of that utterly destroyed. You do not want to hear echoes of familiar voices or reminders of past days. /////

You are now near the house where you suspect they have gathered to wait in hiding for the remainder of this awful Sabbath to be over. You could just walk those last steps,/ go up the outer stairs, knock at the door, and whisper, “It’s Thomas.” But instead you turn and risk yourself again to the city streets.//

We fast forward to a week later.// You can no longer live with this loneliness and fear, so you surrender and decide to risk joining the other disciples and most probably your own death.  The first one you meet at the door is your friend John.  He immediately blurts out,” Thomas,/ Jesus is alive and appeared to us on the evening of the first day of the week when you were not there”! They all try to persuade you of what has happened in your absence. You feel only more contempt for their naïve and magical thinking. But with no place else to go, you stay with them, against your better judgment./ You are hungry, tired, depressed, and want to go back home to Galilee. Even the women cannot console you./

 Then just as the light of dawn breaks, Jesus appears again. He walks right through the doors and walls of the room! He comes directly to you and says,/ “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt/ but believe.”// You stretch out your hand as if to touch,/ and your broken heart is healed./////

Frederick Buechner believes there is no other story in the Bible easier to imagine ourselves into/ than John’s story about Thomas.

 John is writing near the end of the first century to people like us who have never seen Jesus in the flesh. A child who is five on the first Easter, the age of some of St. Mark’s day school children, is close to seventy when John writes his gospel.2

 Herbert O’Driscoll’s midrash1 suggests that Thomas, possibly an introvert, chooses not to join the other disciples after Good Friday because he wants to be alone to deal with the depth of his loss. Far from being a doubter, the description forever attached to his name, Thomas is the consummate disciple, the one who gives himself utterly to Jesus.//

 Those of us who have given ourselves deeply and generously to a cause can often withdraw from participation when something changes and our passion diminishes. We decide we no longer want to be associated with the relationships that issued from that passion that once gave meaning to much of our time and energy. We find ourselves blaming everything and everyone connected to the cause or church or organization or relationship where we have been harmed./

If you read church history or spend much time in a church, unfortunately you will know this so often happens in the life of the church and the world. A vestry, choir, or school board member, Sunday school teacher, outreach leader, (even clergy) ends years of service and is never seen again. They have been through very difficult times and issues, and have performed with magnificent competence, but something happens to break the bond with congregational or community life. There may still have a personal spiritual relationship with God, but now there is an aversion to the life of the worshipping community.

Sometimes this may result simply from burnout. We are tired of trying to resolve endless struggles between differing opinions and factions. Sometimes the cause is deeper. Perhaps we have a sense of disappointment with the church, a feeling not so much that we must leave it as if somehow the church has left us. Perhaps we expect the church to have less unpleasantness than we find in other worlds we move in, our home or our professional life. Perhaps we expect people to behave differently, be more forgiving, more able to love each other. Little by little we come to see the church as the problem, or at least a large part of the problem. And so there comes a day when we discover that life is perfectly livable without something we once treasured and even loved. /

It is sad that this link to a church community is often severed precisely at a stage of life when we most need a worshipping community where we can find friendship that is freely offered, support when we need it, and a purpose in living.//

The gospels tell us that Thomas desperately wants to believe in Jesus. When given the chance, he blurts out his steadfast faithfulness as he kneels before the One who comes to all of us through our locked doors/ as Thomas looks up and says, “My Lord and my God.”

For Thomas and the rest of us, this return to our faith community is the pathway to encounter the Risen Christ.  We must always remember that Jesus cares so desperately about people like us,/ like Thomas,/ who get burned out or lose faith in our community that Jesus does a total rerun of his first Easter encounter with the disciples just for those of us like Thomas who leave for one reason or another,/ but in our desperation finally return. Jesus is calling specifically to us/ as he speaks over Thomas’ shoulder/ looking directly at us/ and says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."//

 This is the first of many Easter gospel stories about where we find the resurrected Jesus,// in community./ Thomas’ story marks our opening to a new stage of faith and church life. Up until Thomas’ story, our New Testament faith came in the human face of Jesus’ physical appearance. Today the risen Christ meets us in the hearing of his word/ in community. /

As it was for Thomas,/ may it also be for us,/ in this faith community.

1 Herbert O’Driscoll, “The Encounter,” Four Days in Spring, pp. 96-100.

2Barbara Brown Taylor, “Believing in the Word,” Home By Another Way, pp. 114.