Stories are how human beings make sense of the world. We do it all the time. We can’t help ourselves. It’s just how our brains are made.
From the earliest days of human history, children would sit around the campfire with their elders and ask, “Why are things the way they are?” And the elders would tell a story.
Across cultures and religions, one thing is always true: we tell stories.
And if I were to ask you who you are, you would tell me the story of your life.
Stories are how we make meaning.
Now, the most interesting stories are the ones where things don’t go according to plan. That’s where the good stuff happens.
Nobody wants to see a movie with no conflict. There’s no plot.
When that happens, we tend to fall into three kinds of stories:
The fix-it story, The forget-about-it story, And the figure-it-out story.
The fix-it story is the one we prefer. Something goes wrong, but we come up with a plan and get things back to the way they ought to be. And a lot of the time, that works.
But sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes there are situations we simply can’t fix, no matter how hard we try.
And that’s when we fall into the forget-about-it story.
When everything falls apart, we sit in the ashes and say, “Forget about it. What’s the point?”
But if we don’t give up entirely, if we keep going, we may begin to enter another story: the figure-it-out story.
This is the story that doesn’t fix the problem, but doesn’t give up hope either.
Out of the ashes of the old story, something new begins to take shape—a meaning we didn’t expect, a kind of good we never saw coming.
Not because the suffering was good, but because something real can still emerge within it.
I saw this often in my work as a hospice chaplain.
People would come to me after being told there was nothing more the doctors could do for them.
At first, many of them were living in that forget-about-it story—grieving the life they could no longer return to.
And my work was simply to walk with them.
I would ask about their lives, and I would listen.
And slowly, something would begin to shift.
As they told their stories, they began to see them differently.
They thought about the people they wanted to thank. The people they needed to forgive. The love that had shaped their lives.
And those final weeks or months often became deeply meaningful.
Not because anything was fixed, but because they were finally able to see what mattered.
That journey—from fix-it, through forget-about-it, to figure-it-out—is exactly where we find the two disciples in this morning’s Gospel.
They had hoped that Jesus “would be the one to redeem Israel.”
But things didn’t turn out that way.
Instead of victory, there was a cross.
And when Jesus died, it seemed like all their hopes died with him.
That was the end of their fix-it story.
So when the stranger meets them on the road to Emmaus, they are living in the forget-about-it story.
“They stood still, looking sad.”
They say, “We had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel.”
And Jesus just listens.
And then he begins to reinterpret their story.
He shows them that suffering was not the end of the story, but somehow part of it.
And something begins to stir.
They say, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?”
That’s the beginning of the figure-it-out story.
But it isn’t complete until they reach the table at the end of their journey.
There, Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them.
And suddenly, their eyes are opened.
They recognize him.
The story doesn’t go back to what it was, but reveals something deeper than they had ever imagined.
And then… just like that, he’s gone.
But Jesus is still there, in the blessed and broken bread.
And that’s when they run back to Jerusalem to tell the others.
Kindred in Christ, that same journey is the one we take every time we come here.
We come from weeks that did not go as planned, carrying burdens we cannot fix.
Sometimes we sit here wondering if any of this really matters.
And yet, here, our stories are reframed.
In the reading of Scripture. In the prayers. In the breaking of bread.
Sometimes, our hearts burn within us.
And sometimes, our eyes are opened.
We learn to see Christ here, in this bread and this wine, so that we can learn to see Christ everywhere else.
And we go back out into the world to tell the story:
That Christ is alive. That he meets us in the middle of our stories. And that somehow, even now, our stories are being drawn into the greater story of God.
And so, as we go back out into the world this week—a world where life rarely goes according to plan, and some problems are just too big to be fixed—when we are tempted to throw up our hands and say, “Forget about it,” I want to invite you to keep holding on.
Keep walking that road to Emmaus. Keep listening to each other’s stories. Keep trying to figure it out.
Trust that Christ is with you in the midst of the mess, working not to take things back to the way they were, but to bring forth a new story from the ashes of the old.
Go forth into this world, transformed by the power of Scripture and Sacrament.
And proclaim, not only with your lips but with your lives, the good news:
This is one of the most defensive sermons that I preach in a given year.
Because, every year on this week, the gospel reading is the story of Saint Thomas, often called “doubting Thomas,” because he would not believe in the resurrection until he saw Jesus and touched his wounds.
And every year, I want to say: “Hey now. That’s not fair.”
And I wanna say this for two reasons:
First of all, because doubt is not a sin. Doubt means that you’re taking something seriously enough to ask tough questions. So if anything, St. Thomas the Apostle is not a “Doubting Thomas,” but the patron saint of critical thinkers.
And second of all, Thomas is not the only person in this story who has doubts.
St. Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb and sees actual angels. They tried to explain the situation to her, but she doesn’t believe them.
Later on, she sees Jesus and goes back to tell the disciples—but they don’t believe her either, until Jesus finally shows up and shows them his hands and his side. That’s when they believe.
So when Thomas comes along and says, “Unless I see the mark of the nails… I will not believe,” he is not asking for anything special; He is simply asking for the exact same thing that the others had already received.
So why is he the only one who gets stuck with the label, “Doubting Thomas?” It’s not fair.
So no, I don’t think that Thomas deserves the bad reputation he gets by asking to see the marks of the nails in Jesus’ hands. That’s why I want to come to Thomas’ defense. He’s not a doubting Thomas; he’s the patron saint of critical thinkers.
But here’s the thing: I don’t think this story is actually about Thomas. I think it’s about all of us who came late to the party of the resurrection.
Like Thomas, we don’t get to see what the other disciples saw on that first Easter Sunday. We don’t get the luxury of absolute proof; we have to live with the uncertainty.
Because of that, it’s easy to sometimes feel like we are second class citizens in the kingdom of heaven. We were late to the party, so we don’t get what the others got.
I don’t know about you, but I feel like that a lot of the time. I look around the church and wonder if maybe everyone else understands something that I’m missing.
Other people seem so confident in their faith, but I know that I am riddled with doubt. Other people seem so peaceful, but I know that I am overwhelmed with anxiety. Other people seem so kind and loving, but I feel the fire of anger within me.
It makes me wonder: am I missing something?
If I’m not alone in that feeling, if you’re feeling it too, then Thomas is our guy.
Because Thomas knows what it feels like to be late to the party, to feel like you missed something important, and now everyone else gets something that you don’t.
Thomas is right there with us, in the middle of that angsty feeling, and so is Jesus.
Behind the locked doors of fear and doubt, Jesus appears again: Speaking not judgment, but peace.
Another interesting detail is that the risen Jesus keeps his wounds, even in his resurrected body. Whatever resurrection means, it does not erase the pain we have endured.
He shows us his wounds, not just as proof of the miracle, but as signs of compassion. He says, “Are you hurt? Look: So am I. You are not alone in your pain.”
That tender place is where the encounter happens that inspires Thomas to proclaim his great statement of faith: “My Lord and my God!“
And then Jesus says something that “breaks the fourth wall.”
If you’re not familiar with that term, it comes from television and movies. “Breaking the fourth wall“ is what happens when a character on screen looks into the camera and speaks directly to the viewers at home. It’s a way of including the audience in the story itself.
And that’s exactly what Jesus is doing when he says, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
When Jesus says that last line, he’s no longer speaking just to Thomas; he’s speaking to all of us as well: “Blessed, are you who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Kindred in Christ, what this means is that you are not late to the party. You have not missed out on something that everyone else gets.
You are blessed. Because you have not seen and yet have come to believe.
This is a bold statement. What I’m going to say next is even bolder: That if this blessing applies to us, “who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” then it also applies to those who have not believed, and yet have come anyway.
Blessed are those who keep showing up, even though they’re not sure about what they believe.
When those who stand outside traditional faith choose to do the right thing, they do it for its own sake, not in hope of eternal reward or fear of eternal punishment. They do what’s right out of the goodness of their hearts and we Christians could learn a thing or two from that.
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Blessed are those who have not believed and yet have kept showing up anyway.
Kindred in Christ, there are no second class citizens in the kingdom of heaven. The blessing is bigger than we think. The Holy Spirit is already at work in the lives of those who don’t even have words for it.
So then, the message for us in today’s gospel is actually very simple: Go easy on Thomas. Go easy on yourself. And go easy on each other.
Faith is not a finish line; it’s a process. And sometimes that process looks like asking a lot of tough questions.
Sometimes it looks like showing up week after week, not because you have it all figured out, but because something in you has a hunch that something here is worth holding onto, even if you can’t yet identify what that “something” is.
And the good news is this: Wherever you are in that journey of faith and doubt, Jesus shows up. Behind the locked doors of fear and doubt. In the middle of our questions and uncertainties.
And the words that he speaks are not words of judgment, but of peace.
“Peace be with you,” he says.
So, don’t be afraid of being called a “doubting Thomas.”
Keep asking those tough questions. Keep showing up.
Because it turns out… that’s exactly where the blessing is.
I was thinking this week about the moment when I realized that I wanted to ask my wife to marry me.
Growing up, I had always been told that when I met “the one,” I would “just know”—and that all the love in my heart would cancel out whatever fear or anxiety I had.
But the funny thing is that when the moment finally came, I realized that the love I had for Sarah did not, in fact, cancel out my fear about the future.
Neither did my fear about the future cancel out my love for Sarah.
I held love in one hand, and fear in the other, and both were true in the same place at the same time.
Many of you who are married or partnered will know exactly what I’m talking about.
And many of you will also have experienced that same reality in other places—some of which are a lot more difficult.
I’m thinking of places like hospital rooms,
at gravesides,
and in that middle-of-the-night phone call—
where we’re holding love in one hand
and loss in the other,
and both are equally true in the same place at the same time,
neither one canceling out the other.
If you’ve ever been in that place, first of all, I’m sorry. I wish no one would have to go through anything like that.
And second of all, you’re not alone.
Because that place is exactly where today’s Gospel meets us.
In this Gospel, the sisters Mary and Martha are coping with the loss of their brother Lazarus—holding their grief in one hand and their trust in Jesus—even as they struggle to understand him—in the other.
The raising of Lazarus is one of the best-known—and least understood—passages in John’s Gospel.
It’s a passage that makes me mad, because as a former hospice chaplain, I really wish Jesus had not raised Lazarus from the dead, but had simply comforted Mary and Martha in their grief and assured them that death is a part of life, and we will get through this together.
Instead, Jesus—ignoring my opinions, as usual—goes ahead and raises Lazarus from the dead, while proclaiming, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
Later on, Jesus makes me mad again by saying, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
I’ll be honest: I hate those verses—because if they mean what they sound like they mean…
And I’m not being flippant or disrespectful toward Jesus or dismissive of the scriptures…
I hate those verses because I, as a loving and caring priest, would not dare to dare to tell a grieving family that their loved one died due to the family’s lack of faith. That would be the pinnacle of cruelty.
As a hospital and hospice chaplain, I sat at the deathbeds of literally hundreds of people. I saw miracles of the human spirit that defy my imagination—but not once did I see a deceased person rise up and begin walking around again.
Every single person who died under my care stayed dead.
I offered prayers and comfort to their families. I officiated funerals and memorial services for the departed. But not once did I dare to say, “Lazarus, come out,” and expect to see their departed loved one getting up out of the coffin.
The human experience of the finality of death is what makes this passage seem so offensive to those of us who have lost loved ones—and those who care for those who have lost loved ones, too.
Jesus really seems to have backed himself into a corner on this one.
And those of us who minister in his name are left wondering how he’s going to talk himself out of it.
Thankfully, Jesus is a much smarter man than I am.
And the way he talks himself out of it… is that he doesn’t.
Jesus, in his divine wisdom, lets the paradox stand.
He holds the tension between faith and grief and refuses to allow one to cancel out the other.
On the faith side, he says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
Jesus knows who he is and what he is about to do, and yet that knowledge does not stop him from being fully present with those who weep for the loss of their loved ones.
The Scriptures are crystal clear in telling us that divine omniscience and omnipotence are not barriers to the human love that knows how to “weep with those who weep,” as St. Paul says in Romans 12:15.
It is from this incarnational union of the fully divine and fully human that we get the words of the shortest verse in the Bible: John 11:35—“Jesus began to weep.” Other translations render it in an even shorter and more memorable form: “Jesus wept.”
This verse has been a favorite memory verse of confirmands over the years because of its brevity. As the shortest verse in the Bible, it is also the easiest to memorize.
But I would not be quick to dismiss it, because it contains a profound spiritual truth that lies at the heart of today’s Gospel.
Jesus wept because Jesus loves.
Jesus loves people who are hurting. Jesus loves us when we are at our worst and at the end of our ropes.
In the midst of the impassable chasm of death—between the way things are and the way they ought to be—Jesus loves.
Whatever we do with this biblical text—whether we take it literally or figuratively—the central truth remains: Jesus wept because Jesus loves.
When Jesus says, ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ he is not promising that we will avoid death.
He is claiming that even death cannot separate us from the life of God.
Love is the only way to bridge the gap between the way things are and the way they should be.
Love is the tar that keeps our heels glued in place, between the realities of life and death.
Our faith in the resurrection power of God to overcome the power of death does not negate our sorrow at the fact of death in this present age.
Grief is not a failure of faith. It is the inevitable consequence of choosing to love.
When we know that life, in its present form, is not yet eternal, “grief,” as author Jamie Anderson says, “is just love with no place to go.”
That’s why grief is not a problem to be solved. It’s not a sin or a lack of faith. It is the inevitable consequence of those who choose to love in spite of the reality of death.
Today’s Gospel teaches us that those who love will not escape grief. But those who grieve need not grieve without hope, for death will not have the final word.
The paradox of grief and faith can hold both extremes together because they are bound together with the unbreakable bonds of divine love, which transcends death.
Kindred in Christ,
If the Gospel is true, then our calling from God is not to choose between grief and faith, but to learn how to hold both together in the same place at the same time.
Jesus calls us to love wholeheartedly, even though we know it will cost us.
Jesus calls us to grieve honestly, but not “as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13).
Above all, Jesus calls us to trust—stubbornly—that love is never wasted.
Because if Jesus really is the resurrection and the life, as he said he is, then grief is not a sin, and death does not have the final word.
When we grieve, we are not doing something wrong. We are doing something deeply human—and deeply divine:
We are choosing to love in a world where the work of love is not yet finished.
Once upon a time, there was an expecting mother. In her womb, there were twins. These twins, as people often do when they spend a lot of time together, liked to talk about various things. One day, a particularly philosophical question came up. One turned to the other and asked, “Do you believe there’s any such thing as life after birth?”
“Never really thought about it,” the other twin said, “but I highly doubt it. We’ve never seen anything outside of this place. No one who leaves ever comes back. I think that, when the time comes for us to be born, we just go through that passage and cease to exist.”
“I disagree,” the first said, “I mean, you’re right that we’ve never seen anything outside of this place, but just look at these eyes, ears, hands, and feet that we’re growing! Why are we growing them, if we’re never going to use them? I bet, after we go through that passage, we’ll find out there’s a whole world outside that we’ve never seen before. I have no idea what it will be like, but I have a hunch our time in this womb is getting us ready for whatever comes next.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” said the other. “I bet the next thing that you’re going to tell me is that you’re one of those crazy religious people who believes in the existence of Mom!”
“Well, I don’t think I’m crazy,” the first said, “but, as a matter of fact, I do happen to believe in Mom.”
“Oh, really?” The other said, “Then why don’t you enlighten me, if you’re so wise? I’ve been in this womb for almost nine months, but I’ve never seen a ‘Mom’ or any evidence that convinces me to believe there’s any such thing as life after birth. So then, just where is this hypothetical ‘Mom’ that you supposedly believe in?”
“It’s hard to explain,” the first said, “but I think that Mom is everywhere, all around us. Everything we see in this womb is a part of Mom. So, I guess, it’s kind of like… maybe we’re growing inside of her? You said you’ve never seen Mom, but I think we’ve never seen anything other than Mom. I don’t pretend to have the answer, but I suppose it’s just another one of those things we won’t know for sure until after we’re born.”
There are two things I’d like to point out about this little parable, which I have adapted from Catholic priest and author Henri Nouwen. First of all, neither twin in the story is in a position to know, with any certainty, what the full truth of the matter is. The answers to questions about “life after birth” and “the existence of Mom” are pretty obvious to you and me, who have lived outside the womb for most of our existence, but we can imagine how scary it must have been when we were going through the process for the first time. Even now, uncertainty about “life after death” and “the existence of God” makes us nervous. Maybe someday in eternity, we’ll look back on our earthly lives and laugh at how little we knew back then, but today we can only know what we know, which might give us a little sympathy for those unborn twins and their philosophical questions.
The second detail from that story I’d like us to notice is that the presence of doubt has absolutely no bearing on the twins’ status as beloved children of their mother. She will love them just the same, no matter what philosophical conclusions they draw during their time in utero. In the same way, even the oldest among us are still babies in the eyes of God. Our eternal Mother knows full well that human beings are incapable of answering the biggest questions about reality, so she is able to have sympathy for those who struggle honestly with doubt. Just like those babies in utero, each and every one of us will be loved forever, no matter what we come to believe during our brief time on this Earth.
This means that doubt is not a barrier to faith.
This second fact about Nouwen’s parable of the twins is what I want us to keep in mind, as we turn to look at today’s gospel.
The story of St. Thomas’ encounter with the risen Christ is the most thorough treatment of doubt in the New Testament. Our brother Thomas gets an unfair shake when we use his name to make fun of someone for being “a Doubting Thomas.” After all, Thomas was only doing what any of us would have done, if someone came to us with news that seemed unbelievable. For this reason, I like to think of Thomas as “the patron saint of critical thinkers.” The scientist Carl Sagan famously quipped that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” I imagine Dr. Sagan applauding when St. Thomas proclaims, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
The most intriguing aspect of this story is not Thomas’ doubt, but Jesus’ response to it. If John’s gospel had been written by modern Fundamentalist Christians, they probably would have said that Jesus couldn’t appear in the upper room until the other disciples had excommunicated Thomas for his skepticism. If Jesus appeared at all, it would probably be on the far side of the locked door, shouting about how Thomas is a “sinner” and is “going to hell,” if he doesn’t change his mind. But that’s not what actually happens in John’s gospel.
In the real version of the story, the text says, “Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” Thomas’ doubt, for Jesus, was not a reason to stay away, but a reason to come closer. Thomas’ doubt, for Jesus, was not a reason to offer words of judgment, but a reason to offer words of peace. Jesus doesn’t command Thomas to have blind faith, but gives him the extraordinary evidence he’s looking for.
The presence of this passage in our sacred Scriptures should shape the way we deal with doubts, both our own and those of others. It should help us learn how to accept the process of critical thinking as a necessary part of faith. It should lead us, not to retreat from hard questions, but to advance alongside them.
As Episcopalians, we are blessed with abundant spiritual resources to help us on this journey. The Episcopal Church is part of the Anglican theological tradition. One of the things that makes Anglicanism distinct from some other expressions of Christianity is the way in which we think about our faith. Some other churches see their faith as a monolithic statement by a single and infallible authority. For Roman Catholics, it’s the Pope; for Fundamentalist Protestants, it’s the Bible. But the Anglican theological tradition, as far back as Fr. Richard Hooker in the 17th century, has always viewed Christian theology as a three-way dialogue between Scripture, tradition, and reason.
This way of thinking about our beliefs, sometimes called “the three-legged stool,” means that Episcopalians see our religion as a never-ending conversation. Everyone gets to have a seat at the table, but no one gets to stand on the table and yell at everyone else. Unlike some other religious traditions, Episcopalians do not view their leaders as infallible. We honor our ancestors, but we also believe the Church can be wrong. An interpretation that made sense at one time might stop making sense for future generations. A way of life that seemed just and holy in one century might seem abhorrent in another, and vice versa. This doesn’t mean that “anything goes” in Christian faith and practice, but it does mean that Episcopalians are always open to having a conversation about it.
This understanding of the Christian faith means that Episcopalians can be notoriously hard to pin down when someone asks what our church believes. We frequently disagree with each other, sometimes passionately. The late comedian and devout Episcopalian Robin Williams once said, “No matter what you believe, there’s bound to be an Episcopalian somewhere who agrees with you.”
Finally, thinking of the Christian faith as a three-way dialogue between Scripture, tradition, and reason means that The Episcopal Church is a place where you can bring your whole self to church: Protestant and Catholic, conservative and liberal, believer and skeptic. To all these parts of ourselves and each other, the sign outside our churches around the country proclaims the message loud and clear: “The Episcopal Church welcomes you!”
Whoever you are, whatever you believe, however you identify, and wherever you are on your spiritual journey, you are welcome in this sacred space. That is the message that Jesus proclaimed to St. Thomas in today’s gospel. That is the message that The Episcopal Church seeks to embody every day, as it has for hundreds of years. And that is the message that I hope you hear in this sermon today: That you, with all your doubts and fears, are still a beloved child of God, and you are welcome in this place.
Back before my wife Sarah and I had started dating, we were in that awkward stage where we were both noticing each other, but neither one had worked up the courage to make a move, so we just kept dancing around the subject. One night, Sarah invited me to a party at her house, and we ended up talking on the couch long after everyone else had left. It was getting late, Sarah reached forward for her drink on the coffee table, I unconsciously stretched, and she accidentally sat right back into the spot where my arm was. Sarah was like, “That was smooth! Can we talk about this?” On the outside, I played it very cool and calm, but on the inside, I was like: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Anyway… to make a long story short: It went pretty well and we’ve been married for 20 years.
The moral of the story is that our actions sometimes have an impact beyond what we intended them to have. That was certainly the case with St. Mary of Bethany in today’s gospel.
Mary’s anointing of Jesus happens at a very important turning point in the larger story of John’s gospel. Up until this point, Jesus had been dropping hints about his true identity, but from this point forward, he would begin to speak more openly as the story moved toward its climax with his crucifixion and resurrection.
In the chapter just prior to this one, Jesus raised Mary’s brother Lazarus from the dead. This miracle, according to John, was the catalyst that caused the religious leaders to begin plotting to have Jesus killed. As this part of the story begins, Jesus is having dinner at the home of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. The memory of Lazarus’ death and resurrection was very fresh. Mary would have been deeply moved by the miracle she had just witnessed. Not only had Jesus turned her grief into joy, he had also rescued Mary and Martha from a life of poverty and degradation, which would have absolutely happened to two unmarried women who no longer had a man to speak for them in their patriarchal society. Jesus had saved, not one life, but three lives in his raising of Lazarus from the dead. Mary probably felt that she owed Jesus her life at this point.
As a sign of her gratitude, the text tells us that Mary took “a pound of costly perfume.” The Greek word for “costly perfume” is myrrh, which was used for burial rituals. It is quite likely that Mary had bought this perfume to use for her brother’s funeral, which was no longer necessary, thanks to Jesus. By breaking it open and pouring it on Jesus’ feet, she was expressing her relief and gratitude for what Jesus had done for her and her family.
This, all by itself, would have been a powerful statement, but Jesus gives it an even greater significance that Mary herself could not have known. Jesus says, “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”
Jesus knew, whether through supernatural clairvoyance or just an insightful hunch, that his own death was impending. Mary’s act of devotion meant more than she could possibly have known. Just as Mary honored Jesus with her gratitude, Jesus honored Mary with the knowledge of what her gesture truly meant to him.
The moral of this story is the same as the one I told about my wife and me: Our actions sometimes have an impact beyond what we intended them to have.
Our individual lives are a part of a larger story. Like ripples in a pond, God’s grace expands the meaning of what we do to cosmic significance. If, as Jesus says, even the hairs on our head are numbered, then surely no small act of goodness or kindness goes unnoticed by the God who made the universe.
My favorite modern example of an action that has a greater impact than its intent is the story of Fr. Trevor Huddleston, an Anglican priest who ministered in South Africa in the early twentieth century. Fr. Huddleston was an outspoken activist against the apartheid policies that discriminated against people of color in South Africa. One of the many racist laws on the books at that time was that, whenever a darker-skinned person passed a lighter-skinned person in the street, the darker-skinned person had to step off the curb into the gutter and lift their hat in deference to the lighter-skinned person. Fr. Huddleston, who was himself a lighter-skinned person, thought this racist law was absolutely ridiculous. So, he made it his regular practice that, whenever he passed a person of color in the street, he would step off the curb and lift his hat in a gesture of respect to this fellow child of God. Technically, this was an act of civil disobedience against South African law, but Fr. Huddleston practiced this as an act of divine obedience to the higher law of God, which says that all people are created equal.
One day, Fr. Huddleston was walking down the street and saw a little boy and his mother coming his way. As was his usual practice, he stepped off the curb and lifted his hat in a gesture of respect as they walked by. The boy and his mother were people of color. The little boy asked his mother, “Mummy, who was that man?” And the mother replied, “Son, that man is an Anglican priest, and furthermore, he is a man of God.”
The little boy, telling this story years later, said, “That was the day that I decided I too wanted to be an Anglican priest, and furthermore, a man of God.” That little boy grew up to be Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who helped President Nelson Mandela dismantle the satanic apartheid system that kept God’s beloved children in chains for so many years. It is possible that Fr. Huddleston might have had no memory of that particular day, in which he acted with the same integrity that inspired his actions every day. Like St. Mary of Bethany, Fr. Huddleston could certainly not have known that his simple act of stepping off a curb would have a ripple effect that would eventually lead to the undoing of the twisted system against which he was protesting.
Kindred in Christ, I invite you today to consider how your own simple acts of compassion and courage may have a similar ripple effect on the world in which we live. One never knows when a word of kindness or a gesture of gratitude may have an impact far bigger than its intent. Many such acts are known to God alone, but rest assured that they are known. Jesus says, in his Sermon on the Mount, “When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:3-4).
Dr. Martin Luther King, in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, wrote, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
As witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I want to encourage you this day to speak up whenever one of our siblings in Christ has offered some small word or deed that has impacted your day. It is quite possible that the giver of this gift is unaware of what it meant to you. Be quick to offer thanks to them, and to God for them.
If you are on the receiving end of such recognition, I invite you to listen with ears of your heart, giving thanks to God, who has multiplied the impact of your small gift to mean more than you intended.
Dearly beloved, our lives are not our own and they are not lived alone. It is up to us to enlighten our neighbors with knowledge as they have enlightened us with the love of Christ in their hearts. Who knows whether that grateful acknowledgement might be the very encouragement needed by a weary soul who is secretly despairing of life itself? By adding our small gesture of thanks to the common wealth, we may provide the necessary means by which a life might be saved.
Like St. Mary of Bethany, our actions have an impact far beyond their intent. Let us remember this fact and draw strength from it. May we trust that our lives matter more than we know.
When we talk about “having faith” we tend to talk about it like it’s an object, as if faith was a thing that we can possess in the same way that I “have a car” or “have a house.” But faith is not an object to be had. Faith is a process. It’s something we do.
I would like to look at this idea of faith as a process through the lens of today’s Gospel reading.
Today’s reading tells the story of Jesus’ biggest resurrection appearance to his disciples, up to this point, in Luke’s gospel. Previously, the women had been to the empty tomb and talked to the young man robed in white. Later on, two disciples on the road to Emmaus had walked and talked with a stranger all day without realizing who he was. And then, when they sat down to rest at the end of their day’s journey, the stranger broke the bread, blessed it, and gave it to them. And suddenly their eyes were opened, and they realized it had been Jesus with them all along. So, these stories were floating around, and the disciples didn’t really know what to make of them.
But then, all of a sudden, Jesus is standing there, in the midst of them, while they’re trying to figure it all out. And he says, “Peace be with you.”
Next, the text says, “They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.”
In other words, they were afraid. This corresponds to the first phase of spiritual development: A time that we all go through as kids. One of the big concerns during that time is safety. Kids can’t really protect or provide for themselves, so they frequently live in a state of fear. Jesus here meets the disciples in the midst of their fear. What he offers them is his presence and reassurance.
Jesus says, “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
Those of us who are parents or grandparents have probably experienced a kid waking up in the middle of the night saying, “I had a bad dream.” They come and crawl into bed with us, and we put our arms around them and say, “Hey, it’s okay. I’m here. It’s all right. It was just a bad dream.” We are comforting them and calming their fears.
In this first stage of spiritual development, people (especially kids) are looking to simply be comforted. They need to know that we, the grown-ups in their lives, are there for them when they need us. Our job, when it comes to their spiritual lives, is simply to be with them and Tell the Story of our faith.
It would not make much sense if I, when teaching a first-grade Sunday school class, were to say, “All right now children: I want you to take this doctoral dissertation home and come back with a 10-page paper next week!” That’s not the level where our kids are at. When teaching Sunday school to kids, we’re just trying to tell the stories.
For example, in the story of Easter, we tell them how the stone was rolled away and Jesus rose from the dead. We tell them these stories again and again because the stories are how they’re getting exposed to the content of our faith. Later, when they get a little older, there comes a phase, usually around the time when they become teenagers and young adults, when they start to ask questions. If their parents and church family have faithfully given them love and reassurance, they will hopefully know that church is a safe place to explore those questions. This is what we see Jesus doing next with the disciples.
The text says, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.”
There’s a lot of very understandable skepticism happening here. That’s why Jesus says to them, “‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.”
In the midst of their doubt, Jesus is giving them the freedom to explore the questions and examine the evidence. In the same way, our young people are going to ask us some pretty tough questions as they explore their faith and make it their own. They’re going to get us thinking about our own spiritual path in ways that we maybe haven’t before. That’s one of the gifts that God gives to our younger people: To keep us on our toes, so that we don’t get too complacent!
I would call this second stage “Exploring the tough questions.” Let’s go back to that example of the story of the resurrection:
In the first stage of spiritual development, we just told the story. Now, as we come into what scholars call “critical awareness,” we start to examine the evidence for the resurrection and find that it’s kind of ambiguous. We ask, on the one hand, “Do dead people come back to life?” Well, in terms of our own personal experience, most of us would have to say, “No.” So, the story of Easter raises a tough question: “How is this possible?” Our lived experience creates doubt about the story of the resurrection.
On the other hand, historians have uncovered some interesting pieces of evidence that actually point in favor of the resurrection.
First and foremost, historians know that there were several Messianic movements within Judaism, around the time of Jesus. Lots of people showed up claiming to be the Messiah, most often leading some kind of armed revolution. All of these movements, once their leader was either captured or killed, either fizzled out, dispersed, and ceased to be a thing. But that didn’t happen with Christianity. Something happened that kept us together as a movement: some kind of experience that made Christianity different from all these other Messianic movements. The unanimous report of the early Christians is that they kept going and stayed together because Jesus had risen from the dead.
Another interesting bit of evidence is the day on which we worship. Their experience of the resurrection caused the early Christians to shift their primary day of worship from Saturday, the Sabbath, to Sunday, the first day of the week. The day on which they claimed Jesus had risen. And this switch had already been established by the time the New Testament was written.
I like the fact that the evidence for the resurrection is ambiguous. It doesn’t prove or disprove anything. Therefore, we always have to make a leap of faith.
So then, the first stage of spiritual development is all about “Telling the story.” The second stage is about “Exploring the tough questions.” Both of these are critical stages of spiritual growth. We need to go through them, but it’s also important that we not get stuck in them. If we only ever tell the story, and never ask the tough questions, then we fall victim to fanaticism, denying any evidence that challenges our preconceived notions. On the other hand, if we move into asking the tough questions, but never move past that, we can get just as stuck in the stage of skepticism.
We’re left with a ditch on one side of the road and another ditch on the far side. Is there a third way, through the middle of the road? I think there is.
Let’s return to the gospel the story: The next thing the text tells us is that Jesus “opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” Something else needed to happen, some sort of “opening of the mind” into spiritual awareness.
I think this corresponds quite nicely to the difference between truth and fact. Facts can be verified or falsified. But some things can be true without being factual.
A great example is in the story of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Romeo stands outside Juliet’s house and says, “What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!”
Now, do you think Romeo is trying to say that his girlfriend is a ball of hydrogen undergoing nuclear fusion? That would make no sense. He’s not making a factual statement; he’s speaking truthfully, saying, “The one I love is beautiful, like a sunrise.” If you have ever been in love, you’ve probably felt something similar. Personally, I think my wife’s got a smile like sunshine. I might be biased, but that doesn’t make me wrong! It is a true statement.
That’s the difference between truth and facts. That is what emerges as the gospel says, “Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” And that’s also what happens as we continue to move forward in our process of spiritual development. We go from telling the story, to asking tough questions, to seeing the truth that is deeper than the facts. I like to call this stage, “Embracing the mystery.”
By embracing the mystery, we acknowledge that there aren’t cut and dry answers to all of our questions. But, at the same time, our questions don’t invalidate our faith. We can hold onto our doubts and hold onto the beauty of the stories themselves, as we retell and re-hear them from a new perspective.
The beauty that comes out of this process is that we can hold two truths together at once. In the Episcopal Church, we do this in almost every aspect of our theology. We have multiple interpretations of our beliefs, some of which disagree with each other.
Let’s return again to the story of the resurrection: We’ve already told the story, explored the tough questions, and examined the evidence. As we embrace the mystery, we find that there are some among us who affirm, in no uncertain terms, that there was indeed an empty tomb on that first Easter Sunday. There are others who might say, “Well, I don’t know if there was an empty tomb or not, but maybe it’s a metaphor for the circle of life? As winter gives way to spring, it’s as if the whole earth is springing to life again. It’s a kind of resurrection.” Others might interpret the story of death and resurrection as a metaphor for our spiritual lives: We die to our selfish way of living and rise to a more God-centered or reality-centered way of living.
All of these different interpretations, if we’re embracing the mystery of the resurrection, can be true in their own way. There are faithful Episcopalians, and Christians of every denomination, who hold on to each of these interpretations. I think it’s really cool that we make room for all of them in this church.
A great example of this diversity of interpretations is The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, a book written by Dr. Marcus J. Borg and Bishop N.T. Wright. Both are accomplished biblical scholars. Bishop Wright affirms the more traditional understanding of the resurrection, that there really was an empty tomb on Easter Sunday. Dr. Borg understands the resurrection as a metaphor, but with a deeply spiritual meaning. They’ve written this book together to present their different perspectives in dialogue with each other, as faithful Christians, fellow Anglicans, brilliant scholars, and good friends. (If anyone is looking for future options for the parish book club, The Meaning of Jesus by Wright and Borg would be a really good one.)
Here in the Anglican theological tradition, we see our theology as a dialogue between scripture, tradition, and reason. We see faith, not as something we have, but as a process.
What we see in this morning’s gospel is that Jesus loves his disciples through every stage of this process. He does not berate them or threaten them. He calms their fears, explores the questions, and opens their minds.
As it was with them, so it is with all of us. Wherever you find yourself in this process of faith, whether you’re telling the story, asking the tough questions, or embracing the mystery, I invite you to accept the fact of where you are today. Furthermore, I invite you to accept yourself. Finally, I invite you to accept that you are accepted, just the way you are, and exactly where you are in this journey. Just as Jesus was with his disciples, Jesus is also with you.
Wherever you are in your process of spiritual development: Keep going! Keep telling the story. Keep asking those tough questions. Keep embracing the mystery. The process never ends! And remember: Jesus is with you, loving you all the way.
Dearly beloved, we gather together this evening to celebrate the mystery of resurrection.
The resurrection of Christ is the central event of the Christian faith. In the season of Easter, we remember how the disciples, in some way that defies rational explanation, experienced Jesus as alive after his crucifixion and death. Many historians over the past two millennia, secular and religious alike, have debated the evidence about what really happened on Easter. What they all agree on, however, is that something significant happened that set Christianity apart from other Messianic Jewish movements of the time (of which there were many) and that the unanimous agreement among the earliest Christians was that Jesus had risen from the dead.
Tonight, I will not presume to settle this longstanding debate about the historical facts. Such questions matter deeply, but I leave the resolution of factual questions to archaeologists, historians, and biblical scholars better equipped and better educated than myself. Christian faith in the resurrection is about more than just picking sides between competing sets of alternative facts.
Resurrection, as I said at the beginning, is a mystery. As such, it is more than an historical event that happened once upon a time in Jerusalem; it is an eternal event that is always happening, in every time and place. That is why I say that we have gathered to celebrate the mystery of resurrection, and not merely commemorate it.
When we celebrate something, we give honor to an event that is also an ongoing reality. When we gather together for a birthday or an anniversary, we don’t just remember a birth or a wedding, we celebrate the ongoing reality of a person or a marriage. The Church does the same thing in our celebration of the mystery of Christ’s resurrection.
St. Paul elucidates this aspect of celebration in the passage we read tonight from his Letter to the Romans. Paul writes:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
For Paul, the mystery of the resurrection is an eternal event, in which we all participate. The ritual that makes this eternal event real to us is the Sacrament of Baptism. In Baptism, Paul says, we come to participate consciously in the death and resurrection of Christ. The significance of this conscious participation is primarily ethical, according to Paul. He says, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.”
Paul’s presentation of death and resurrection in Baptism is akin to philosopher John Hick’s description of the spiritual journey as “the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness.” According to both Hick and Paul, the spiritual journey of death and resurrection is a paradigm shift of Copernican proportions, in which our fragile egos come to realize that they are not, in fact, the center of the universe. In the mystery of death and resurrection, we come to embrace the reality that our true selves are rooted and grounded in the sacred energy that is eternally giving birth to the cosmos. Our individual selves are temporary manifestations of that energy, like waves on the surface of an infinitely vast ocean. Our true life, as it were, “is hidden with Christ in God”(Colossians 3:3), and this eternal life is one over which death has no final victory.
Dearly beloved, the mystery of resurrection is not limited to a single event in first-century Judea, but has been unfolding from the beginning of time until now, and I have every reason to trust that it will continue to do so in perpetuity. Furthermore, the mystery of resurrection is not limited to Christians, humans, or even planet Earth, but is active in all corners of the universe simultaneously.
I do not ask you to tonight to put blind faith in these statements, simply because they have been spoken from a pulpit. I invite you to examine the facts for yourselves.
Approximately sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid more than six miles wide slammed into Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. The impact made a crater 110 miles wide and twelve miles deep, deposited a layer of iridium in soil around the planet, and set off our planet’s fifth mass extinction. Seventy-five percent of all life on the planet, including the dinosaurs, were wiped out by the environmental devastation unleashed by this impact.
There can be no debate about the profound destructiveness of this event, but there is a wonderful and creative aspect to the story that is often overlooked. During the time of the dinosaurs, mammals were small in size and few in number. Tiny shrew-like rodents huddled together in underground burrows in order to avoid the gargantuan lizards that dominated Earth’s surface.
Unlike the reptiles, natural selection had gifted these little mammals with a powerful new tool in their brains, called “the limbic system.” The limbic system is the part of our brains where emotions are produced. It governs our social relationships and allows us to make more complex judgment calls than the basic survival instincts of our brain stem. Because of the limbic system, mammals were able to care for their young andform bonded family groups. Those little rodents were more to us than just vermin infesting the forest floor; they were our great-great-great grandparents.
When the dust finally settled after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, our mammalian ancestors cautiously emerged from their underground dens and began to explore the surface the Earth. In time, they evolved into primates with a highly developed neocortex (that’s the computer part of our brains) and, eventually, into humans.
So, the asteroid impact that caused the death of the dinosaurs also led to the evolution of new forms of life. Because of our cuddly mammalian ancestors and their beautiful little limbic systems, this cataclysmic extinction event opened the door for deeper expressions of love than had ever existed before on planet Earth. And you, the people sitting in these pews tonight, are the direct descendants of those brave and loving creatures.
Here, in the very fabric of our planet, we discover the mystery of resurrection at work on a timescale that predates the human by millions of years. There is also, in this discovery, a profound harmonization between the scientific story of nature and the biblical story of creation. Dr. Francis Collins writes, “God has now given us the intelligence and the opportunity to discover [God’s] methods… For me scientific discovery is also an occasion of worship” (Time Magazine, August 7, 2005).
Turning from the Christian story of Easter and the scientific story of creation, we can also findthe great mystery of resurrection at work in our lives today. In every life, it is said, a little rain (and not a few asteroids) must fall. Each of us endures moments (or seasons) of crisis, in which we die a little (or a lot) to one way of being and rise to another. Perhaps a job or a relationship has not turned out as expected; perhaps a diagnosis or accident has derailed one’s plans for the future; perhaps a person or community, in whom one had trusted, has utterly betrayed that trust. Even happy events, like weddings and graduations, can be occasions of death for one’s former way of life.
Like most parents, I can remember that there was once a time before I had children, but I no longer have any emotional access to that memory. Since becoming a father, my energy, my time, and (Lord knows) my money are no longer my own. Adapting Paul’s words to my present circumstances, I can definitively testify that the luxury of my formerly child-free life has been “buried with Christ by baptism into death,” but I can also testify that the experience of parenthood has opened my heart to greater depths of love and raised me to “newness of life” in ways that I could never have imagined. In my life as a father, and in my life as a Christian, I must come to admit that I am no longer the center of my own little world. Instead, I am but a speck of dust in company with my fellow specks, orbiting around a much greater center of our being. My self-centeredness has died and been resurrected as wonder and love on a cosmic scale.
This Easter, I invite you to consider the many deaths and resurrections you have endured in your life. I invite you to ask yourself: What are the cataclysms and crises that brought an end to an old way of life for you? What helped you make it through those days? What new insights and perspectives did you gain from those crises that you continue to carry to this day? Finally, looking at the present challenges in your life or the world around you, what new possibilities might be emerging from just below the surface?
As you ask yourself these questions, I pray that the answers you find and the meaning you create will lead you to “newness of life” in the mystery of resurrection. Whoever you are, whatever your personal beliefs or faith tradition may be, and in whatever way is most meaningful to you, may you journey alongside us Christians in the spirit of our Easter proclamation: “Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!”
St. Martin’s Cross, Iona Abbey. Image by Colin Smith. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
Friends and commentators from all over the theological spectrum have mentioned that I don’t seem to have given susbstitutionary atonement theory its due in my post from earlier this week, The Wrath of God and the Presbyterian Hymnal.
In that post, I leaned heavily on presenting substitutionary atonement as “cosmic child abuse” (an excellent turn of phrase I’m borrowing from Sarah Sanderson-Doughty). I wrote:
…penal substitution sets up a scenario where Jesus saves humanity from the rage (not the wrath) of an out-of-control, abusive parent. When all is said and done, the church gathers around a crucifix and hears, “This is your fault. Look at what you made God do. You are so bad and dirty that God had to torture and kill this beautiful, innocent person so that he wouldn’t do the same thing to you. Therefore, you’d better shape up and be thankful or else God will change his mind and torture you for all eternity. And don’t forget: this is Good News and God loves you.” If any human parent did that, he or she would be rightly incarcerated, even if the innocent victim was willing. If that’s what Christianity is, then you can count me out.
Sadly, this (admittedly extreme) depiction accurately portrays substitutionary atonement as it was presented to me by fundamentalist pastors and teachers I encountered in high school and college.
However, I realize that thoughtful evangelicals and catholics will cringe at my presentation, since they accept the theory, but not in its “cosmic child abuse” form. For them, it represents the epitome of love and sacrifice. I remember seeing an art project made by a teenager that showed one person pushing another out of the path of an oncoming car with John 15:13 written across the top: “Greater love hath no man (sic) than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” For them, substitutionary atonement is precisely the opposite of child abuse: it is the ultimate standard of loving sacrifice, established by Jesus himself, to which every parent, spouse, and friend should aspire.
I understand and respect this angle, but I suspect that many of these more informed and compassionate evangelicals and catholics may not realize what is being propagated in their name. The heresy of “cosmic child abuse” is alive and well in traditional, orthodox congregations and parishes the world over. Curious outsiders and wounded insiders are being exposed to violent, hateful theology and end up rejecting Christianity at large based on this misrepresentation. That’s why I think it is incumbent upon liberals, evangelicals, and catholics alike to think well about what their atonement theology does mean to them and then speak up (loud and often) to counterbalance the voices of violence and hate that dominate public media in Jesus’ name.
With that in mind, I thought I might revisit the subject of substitutionary atonement today and present what I think are some of the more positive contributions it might make to the Christian theological project, writ large. Sections of this article have been lifted and adapted from my reply to a comment on the previous post.
Many of the New Testament passages dealing with substitutionary atonement center around interpreting the significance of Jesus’ crucifixion through the lens of sacrificial worship in Second Temple Judaism. The use of such a schema made total sense as an apologetic strategy in that time and place (much like Anselm’s strategy made sense in feudal Britain).
Jesus, of course, is presented as the priest and the sacrifice that supersede the Temple cult. The temple authorities claimed exclusive access to God through their rituals and institution. The early Christians, on the other hand, used this priest/sacrifice imagery to legitimate their own Christocentric practice while demonstrating its continuity with traditional Judaism. The language of temple, priest, and sacrifice would have helped the gospel make sense to a first century Jewish mind. Obviously, the strategy worked: Christians and Pharisees were the only forms of Judaism to survive the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. This interpretive schema gave Christians the framework they needed to survive without a standing Temple.
The Pharisees, for their part, had the Torah, the synagogue, and the family home as centers for their faith-practice. They went on to complete the Talmuds and form the basis for modern rabbinic Judaism as we know it today. The Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots all pretty much died out as movements by the end of the second century.
Substitutionary atonement, understood within the cultural context of Second Temple Judaism, makes total sense as a first century apologetic strategy. It’s actually rather brilliant and obviously effective, given the lasting impact it’s had on the development of Christian atonement theory. The scholastic Anselm further developed the idea susbstitutionary atonement in the 11th century as part of his own brilliant and timely apologetic effort.
My only problem with it is when it is used as the primary or only legitimate atonement theory in our day. Such a narrow focus ignores the multiple other models for salvation presented by scripture and tradition. I fear that a one-sided emphasis on individual guilt and forgiveness through substitutionary atonement is unnecessarily handcuffing our evangelistic efforts by ignoring the many ways in which the gospel might be interpreted, preached, understood, and received by people today.
In addition to priest and purifying sacrifice, Christ can also be embraced as a physician for the sick, a liberator for the oppressed, a light in the darkness, food and drink for hungry souls, or a friend for the lonely. My hope is that Christians today might let these many images take root in our imaginations so that we might be inspired to become more faithful and effective witnesses of Christ in word and deed.
Rene Girard is one writer whose work presents, in my opinion, some rich possibilities for understanding the crucifixion of Jesus as a substitutionary sacrifice. A Roman Catholic scholar of mythology, Girard identifies patterns of mimetic violence at work in the development of religions and societies.
From birth, human beings are presented with models that we are meant to imitate. This happens on a primal level with one’s parents and siblings. As societies grow, our caches of models will grow as well. Post-industrial consumer capitalism in the Information Age presents us with a greater supply of models than any other culture in the history of the planet.
As imitators of models, we compete with one another. Over time, our competition grows fierce. The “war of all against all” (thank you, Hobbes) threatens to unravel the fabric of society and return us to primal chaos.
At this point, according to Girard, a scapegoat is chosen: someone at whom the rest of society can redirect the energy of their internal conflict and self-hatred. The scapegoat is made to bear the blame for this conflict and is summarily sacrificed.
In the wake of the sacrifice, the mimetic conflict is temporarily relieved and the community enjoys a period of relative peace and stability. Previously blamed for the violence, the scapegoat is now credited as the source of the temporary peace and is deified as a god. Girard’s theory is that this is how the deities of classical mythology received their identities. The cycle of violence then resets and repeats itself.
Applying his theory of mimetic violence to his own Roman Catholic theology, Girard presents Jesus as the willing scapegoat. Jesus deliberately enters into the cycle of mimetic violence with the intention of stopping it. He is aware of what is involved in that process and embraces the role of scapegoat.
According to this reading of the atonement, Jesus is still “sacrificed for our sins” but the wrath he is appeasing is not the wrath of God, but the rage of sinful, selfish humans. He substitutes himself in the place of all other scapegoats who endure the unjust violence of society.
In the resurrection, God intervenes to vindicate the scapegoat, unmasking and disarming the patterns of mimetic violence. Christians, as followers of Jesus the willing and vindicated scapegoat, are called to side with all future scapegoats and end the cycles of violence and exclusion, even if it means being crucified ourselves.
Rene Girard’s theory presents us with a way of unserstanding susbtitutionary atonement that can redeem it as a viable apologetic strategy in this consumer capitalist society, just as Anselm of Canterbury and the New Testament authors used it in their respective eras.
In this Girardian sense, I am able to reclaim substitutionary atonement and “cling to the old rugged cross”. I see in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection the end of all hate and violence. I look forward to a time when all humanity will “exchange [the old rugged cross] one day for a crown” as cycles of mimetic violence come to an end.
A middle aged man goes to see his doctor for a physical. At the end of the examination, he asks, “Well Doc, do you think I’ll live to be a hundred years old?”
“Let’s see,” the doctor said, “do you smoke?”
“No,” the man said, “absolutely not. Never.”
Doc: “OK then, do you drink?”
Man: “Not a single drop in my entire life.”
Doc: “Do you eat a lot of sugary or fatty foods?”
Man: “No way! I’ve always been very careful about what I eat.”
Doc: “Do you drive very fast?”
Man: “Never! I always drive 5 miles an hour below the speed limit, just to be sure.”
Doc: “I don’t quite know how to ask this one, but have you had a lot of girlfriends?”
Man: “Absolutely not. I’m celibate and I’ve been celibate for my entire life.”
Doc: “Then why on earth would you want to live to be a hundred?!”
Why indeed. You and I live in a culture that has mastered the art of denying death. Everything from anti-aging cream to plastic surgery is designed to keep us from facing the reality of our own mortality. Consumer advertising and commercial television keeps us distracted from thinking about death until we absolutely cannot avoid it anymore. At that point, if we so choose, they can give us drugs that will “make us as comfortable as possible,” effectively tuning us out until our bodies stop functioning. Our culture’s goal, it would seem, is to first ignore and finally numb the dying process so that we won’t ever have to come to grips with it.
Of course, the wisest among us don’t wait until that point to reflect upon their own mortality. They find their own way to accept it and even make peace with it. For these people, thinking about death doesn’t have to be something dark or morbid. In fact, it can give their lives a sense of meaning and purpose. People who know and accept the fact that they are going to die live with a conscious awareness that they have a finite amount of time on this earth and it’s up to them to make the most of it.
If you knew that you only had a week, month, or year to live, how would you choose to spend that time? What do you want your life to stand for? When other people look back at your life, what would you want them to remember about you? These are the questions that a wise person asks in the face of mortality.
When we accept that this life will not last forever, we realize that it cannot be an end in itself. Like the man in the joke, we have to ask ourselves: what’s the point of living to be a hundred years old if all you’re going to do is eat Brussels sprouts? The truly wise among us realize that life cannot last forever, therefore the truly wise among us also realize that each life must be lived for something larger than itself. Every mortal life, it seems, is a means to an end.
In spite of our culture’s death-denying attempts to distract or numb us, each of us has probably known, met, or heard about at least one person who made his or her mortal life meaningful by dedicating it to something larger than himself or herself. We tend to respect or admire such people when we meet them. Their examples might even inspire us to look more deeply at our own lives, face our mortality in new ways, and discover meaningful possibilities within us that we hadn’t noticed before. It’s a beautiful thing when that happens.
However, it’s at this point that our cultural programming kicks back in and tends to shut us off toward the next step in our development. Our culture is so individualistic that we don’t even think about the larger social bodies of which we are a part. We tend to stop with ourselves and not notice how it is that an awareness of mortality applies to larger realities.
People are mortal. We know that. We accept that fact, at least theoretically, even if we choose to ignore it for our entire lives. However, not many of us stop to think about other things that share our mortality. These things might last much longer than we do, but they too will one day fade from existence. Families are mortal. Surnames and lineages come to an end through a lack of offspring. Churches and other faith communities are mortal. There comes a point when dwindling membership and a lack of funds causes an institution to close its doors. The same thing is true of entire religions at large. There are very few people on this planet who continue to worship the gods of Mount Olympus in the same way that they were worshiped by Greeks in centuries past. Nations are mortal. The Roman Empire was once the dominant superpower in the world, unlike anything else that had come before it. Where is the great Roman Empire today? Buried under the rubble of history and preserved in ruins frequented by tourists in Bermuda shorts. Species are mortal. Dinosaurs no longer roam the earth like they did 65 million years ago. Finally, even the planets and stars are mortal. One day, our very own sun will burn up all of its hydrogen fuel and explode into a violent supernova, momentarily becoming the brightest star in some distant sky.
If coming to grips with our own individual mortality is difficult, accepting the mortality of families, churches, species, and stars feels almost impossible. Yet, the same truth applies to these larger mortal beings that first applied to mortal human beings: it is in facing mortality that we find meaning.
Let’s look at this idea in relation to this morning’s reading from Mark’s gospel. The story opens as Jesus and his disciples are leaving the great Jerusalem temple, the epicenter of Jewish worship in the first century CE. Jesus, as usual, is walking away from yet another fight with the established religious leaders of his day. In the previous chapter, chapter 12, you can read about Jesus butting heads with representatives from almost every major Jewish sect and community: Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and temple scribes. The conflict between Jesus and the organized religion of his day had reached such a boiling point that Jesus, in his frustration, was about ready to give up on it. When this morning’s passage opens with him leaving the temple, he’s not just out for a stroll, he’s right in the middle of storming out in a huff.
It’s at this point that Jesus’ disciples, in their usual tactless and somewhat dimwitted manner, decide to stop and admire the lovely architecture of this religious icon and national monument of Judaism. They say of the temple, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Jesus is unimpressed. He says, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
He’s talking about mortality of the temple: this central symbol of religious and national identity for the Jewish people. They were under the impression that this sacred building would stand forever under divine protection. For them, the temple was immortal. It was an end in itself as a center of worship. The idea had never occurred to them that it might not be there one day.
As it turns out, Jesus’ prediction was spot-on. The Jerusalem temple, like any human being, was mortal. It was eventually burned to the ground by the Romans during an uprising in the year 70 CE. It was never rebuilt. The site where it once stood is now occupied by the Dome of the Rock, one of the most sacred places in Islamic religion.
The destruction of the temple was unthinkable to the average Jew, but to Jesus it was inevitable. The wisdom of Jesus did not stop with an awareness of his own individual mortality, but extended to embrace the mortal and finite nature of all things. Just as it was for individuals, so it is for temples, religions, countries, species, planets, and stars: to face mortality is to find meaning.
If our great struggle in life is limited to ensuring the continued existence of particular people, places, institutions, or things, then we have already doomed ourselves to failure. Nothing lasts forever. We need to accept that. What Jesus said about the Jerusalem temple, we could say about anything: ““Do you see these? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” All things are mortal.
The sooner we realize this truth, the sooner we can get on with the business of asking the really important questions about existence in reality. Concerning our individual selves, we can ask: “What am I living for? What will people remember about me when I’m gone? What will be my lasting contribution to the world around me or the universe as a whole? What is the meaning of my life?”
We can ask these same questions about our mortal families or this mortal country. The day will come when the United States, like the Roman Empire, will only exist as a chapter in a history book. Accepting the inevitability of this fact, we need to ask ourselves as Americans: “When that day comes, what will that chapter say?”
As Christians, we can also ask these same questions about our church, our denomination, and our religion as a whole. We need to get over this ego-centric idea that God will protect and preserve us from our own collective mortality. Just look at the way Christianity itself has changed over the last two thousand years. We shouldn’t kid ourselves into thinking that the Christianity we practice is identical in faith and form to the Christianity practiced by the Apostle Paul or St. Augustine of Hippo. We identify ourselves as Presbyterians, but if John Knox and John Calvin (the founders of Presbyterianism) were sitting in this church right now, they would be horrified by much of what they would see. Likewise, if a Christian from the year 2412 were to time travel into this sanctuary right now, that person’s faith would likely seem so foreign to us that we wouldn’t even want to call it ‘Christian’ at all. Just as Paul and Calvin have shaped us, our faith will shape the future long after we are gone and the pressing crises of our era have ceased to be relevant concerns. What will be our lasting contribution to that future?
Finally, as members of this church, I think we need to ask these questions about our mortal congregation. This little church has been in Boonville for over two hundred years. We take great pride in our history and our building. Maintaining the integrity and beauty of this place is a chief concern for many people in this room. But all of us together need to hear Jesus saying to us what he said about his own temple: “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” This place, this building, and this congregation are all mortal. They will not last forever. “All will be thrown down,” as Jesus said. If our only motivation in coming here week after week is to keep the doors open and the lights on, then we’ve already failed. We’re like the man in the joke at the beginning of this sermon: we have no reason to live for another hundred years. Wise individuals live with a conscious awareness of their inevitable death and then adjust their lives accordingly, so as to make them as rich and meaningful as possible. It is no different with wise churches.
This church will die eventually. Whether it’s in ten years or another hundred years, it will happen. We need to remember that. We need to embrace that truth for ourselves so that we, as a church, can make the most of the time we’ve been given right now. Knowing that this church will one day die and “not one stone will be left here upon another,” we need to ask ourselves, “Why are we here? What is this church living for? What will be our lasting contribution to the life of this community after our doors are closed and our lights shut off forever? What is the meaning of our life together, as a church?” Those are the real questions that we need to be asking, not just once for a special project or a mission study, but continually. We need to set these questions before our eyes like a carrot dangling in front of a horse during a race. These are the questions that need to drive us, propel us, or perhaps lure us forward into the future.
As we explore these questions within the conscious awareness of our church’s impending death (whenever that will happen), I believe we’ll start to see a slow-motion miracle in progress. Even as we are facing and embracing death, I believe that we will also start to experience a kind of resurrection. It’s been my experience and observation that the most vibrant, active, and growing churches are the ones who have found their reason for being, the meaning of their existence, outside themselves. These churches are passionate about spiritual growth and community service. Their members gather together, Sunday after Sunday, not to maintain what they have, but to seek what they desire. There is a yearning deep within such people for “something more.” They are hungry for silence, prayer, scripture, and sacrament. They long to deepen their connection with the sacred mystery of divine love. This love, in turn, leads them out, away from the church and into the streets of this community where love demands to be shared with hurting people through compassionate word and deed. This is my vision of a church that faces mortality and finds meaning. When the day comes that “not one stone will be left here upon another,” such a church will live on in a state of resurrection, even if our doors are closed, our lights shut off, and our roof caved in. Even then, even if our church dies, it will live.
As a church, as individuals, as a country, and as a species, may we be people who live with a consciousness of death. May we face mortality and find meaning. In the midst of these piles of rubble, where stones have been thrown down from the broken remnants of our sacred temples, may we walk together the path of our own, continual, slow-motion resurrection, following in the footsteps of the Living Christ, the Risen One in our midst, the faithful friend who abides with us and guides us on our way.
“The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones…I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”
Reflection by Quinn G. Caldwell
Here’s what the story says: dry bones are not the final state of things. Death will not win. Here’s what it says: life wins.
Here’s what it doesn’t say: that they were human bones. Or that those bones went back together in their original order. Or that the bodies at the end were the same as the bodies in the beginning.
We tell this story as if it’s only about humans, as if we’re the only species God loves enough to waste the energy on. But this is the God that notes the fall of every sparrow, right? Surely God noted the fall of every pterodactyl. Surely, God noticed the fate of the hominid Australopithecus afarensis just as fully as he does that of the hominid Homo sapiens.
99% of all the different species that once lived are now extinct. And yet, the place is full of life. Why? Because God does not let extinction win. The dinosaurs go down to bones and molecules, and the mammals rise up to take their place. Homo habilis goes extinct, and up rises Homo sapiens. One very particular Homo sapiens goes down to dust, and rises up the King of Heaven.
Death happens, but so does resurrection. Extinction happens, but so does evolution. And if our bones fit together differently when we walk out of the valley than when we walked in, maybe that’s not so bad. I mean, you’re better looking than Paranthropus boisei any day.
Prayer
For evolution, thank you. For resurrection, thank you. For not giving me a protruding brow ridge and shallow brain pan, thank you, thank you, thank you. Amen.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 