Brief synopsis of the readings: Our first reading comes to us from nearly the beginning of the book of the Acts of the Apostles. It was written by the Gospel writer Luke, and is essentially the 2nd volume of a 2 volume set. Here we view the earliest days of the community of those who saw the resurrected Jesus. They met in the Portico of Solomon (in the Temple) and their popularity grew. Even people who didn’t live in Jerusalem brought the sick to them for healing. In John’s Gospel, Jesus appeared to the apostles and showed him the wounds from his crucifixion. He also gave them the power to forgive sins. But one of their number, Thomas, was not present. Later, when he was told of this he refused to believe them. Thomas told them that he would not believe it until he saw the wounds for himself. The next week they were gathered again (with Thomas present) and Jesus once again appeared. This time he invited Thomas to inspect his wounds and Thomas replied: “My Lord and my God!”
I think we’ve all experienced the death of a loved one and prayed that it was all a mistake. We’ve all hoped that our loved one would come through the door and tell us this awful thing didn’t happen. And for those who watch soap operas (or daytime dramas), it’s a fairly common occurence.
But it doesn’t happen and when we lose a loved one we begin the long, hard work of grieving. We move on with our life without this person and adjust our path. And while our beliefs tell us that we will be reunited in Heaven, we will not see our loved one for the rest of our lives here.
Given this, I can only imagine the reaction of the apostles when Jesus suddenly appeared to them, bypassing the locked door. I touched on this last week, but from where we sit it’s perhaps a too easy to accept Jesus’ resurrection because we’ve known about it all our lives.
But, and this bears some thought: what if you did see your loved one three days after you watched him die? And more than that, not only is he back alive, but so are all your dreams. These apostles, these merry brand of rag tag men and women, pinned all their hopes on this Jesus of Nazareth. He proclaimed a new Kingdom of God and they were going to be his inner circle. They were salivating at the idea that the rest of their lives they would be known as Jesus’ top advisors.
And then he was gone.
And then he was back. I say this not just because he is my namesake, but for Heaven’s sake cut a little slack to Thomas. Nearly delirious with grief I can well understand how he dared not hope that what they said was true. I can understand how he didn’t want another climb and freefall of that roller coaster.
And Jesus is back from the dead. So now what do the apostles do? So now what do we do? In some ways that’s the question we continue to unpack even 2000 years later. But I also think this is where we look in wrong place.
Most, if not all of us, read these readings from Acts of the Apostles with some nostalgia. If only we could live like they lived, if only people looked at us like they looked at Peter and the rest of the gang. In coming weeks we’ll see how selfless and successful they were, how bold and brave they were. If only…
And taking nothing away from the fact that they were selfless and successful and bold and brave, we also need to keep them in the context of their time. Because if we don’t, if we hold them up as the summit and pinnacle of what our community should look like, we continue to fall short and feel inadequate. And this inadequacy can morph into paralysis or worse.
Countless times in our history individuals or groups large and small have made this announcement: “We have strayed from/drifted from/betrayed the Kingdom Jesus gave us. We will read again the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles and do exactly what they did. We (and only we) will be rewarded by God for finally getting it right.
Right. Reformation holds a critical place in our lives as Christians and we look at Lent as a way of “getting back on track.” But we have to remember that this community in Acts was far from perfect.
They accepted the institution of slavery. While Jesus’ treatment of women pushed the envelope, nobody back then would have thought of women as equal to men. They were all Jews, and the first true conflicts of this community centered on their relationship with non-Jews and other strangers. We can only imagine how they would have reacted to people of different skin color or different sexual orientations.
My point is this: We should look at this community not as the summit, but as the launching pad. Scripture gives us confusing clues over what we need to do to be saved, but it is clear about how we are called to treat each other.
We are called to love one another. We are not called to judge one other. We are not called to decide who is saved and who isn’t. We are not called to divide ourselves into groups or hierarchies (inevitably placing ourselves at the top).
And yet we can look on our history and see that progress has happened only in fits and starts. I know many of you read this from countries other than the United States, but please humor me here. My best illustration comes from the history I know best.
Let’s begin with slavery: Turning prisoners of war into lifelong slaves goes back as far as we can remember. In the United States people from Africa were kidnapped and transported to the “new world” began in the early 1600s and almost everyone accepted this. But some read Scripture and felt that enslaving people (and their descendents) was morally bankrupt. The abolitionist movement clearly sprouted out of Christian beliefs. It grew slowly but it did grow, and by 1808 it was illegal to import new slaves. In 1865 slavery became illegal. It took a long time, but it was clear that loving one another did not include enslaving them.
As I said, Jesus’ treatment of women surprised people of his time. From Mary Magdalene to the woman caught in adultery, to the woman at the well, Jesus reached out to women in ways he wasn’t supposed to. That said, our current treatment of women as equals continues to catch up. In the United States womens’ right to vote won’t celebrate a century until 2020. Women in their 50s and 60s tell stories of job discrimination and objectification. And I don’t want to spend much time on this, but we have a Presidential candidate whose treatment of women embarrasses all of us. From the 1960s until today and beyond, many of us (men) read Scripture and recognize that men and women are (equally) halves of the same whole. We stopped talking about Eve “seducing” Adam into sin and read again how Jesus treated women.
Finally this is the part of the homily that may cause the most controversy: how do we love those of other sexual orientations? Over the last 2000 years we have learned much about how we treat people we don’t recognize or whose experience we don’t share. We have, nearly always, come to this understanding only after being challenged by people who love us.
If we believe in a salvation history that progresses our understanding of what it means to love one another, can we ignore those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender? Can we look on the LGBT community with love even if we are heterosexual? I hope we can.
I have to confess little understanding for the phrase “love the sinner and hate the sin” when I don’t believe that they are in sin (anymore than the rest of us). I know a scary number of gay couples whose marriage mirrors my straight marriage. They love one another and work each day to continue their lives together. Some have children and some don’t. But at the end of their lives they want only this: that their lives matter and we will all be joined in Paradise after we die.
I call on all of us to look on Acts of the Apostles not as the summit but as the starting line. It calls us to look not on their acts, but ours. It calls us to see Jesus’ call to love that concentrates not on our results but on our desire to love.
Most of all it calls us to never be comfortable. Throughout our lives we will be called to interact with those who make us uncomfortable. We can react with fear or we can react with love.
If the resurrection of Jesus calls us to anything, it calls us to choose love over fear. Let us do that.