Second Sunday of Easter April 18, 2004.

Acts 5:27-32

Psalm 16

1 Peter 1:3-9

John 20:19-31

It's the Second Sunday of Easter. Our shock of joy is nuanced and our Easter peace less settled. We are invited to probe the mysteries of life and death, to press deeply in the ways we see and proclaim Christ alive in the world and church today, to press until we meet the point of resistance in fear, anguish, death, and disbelief. The sunrise is more splintered than wholly splendored when we come searching for the truth of resurrection on the Second Sunday of Easter.

First Reading

The empty-tomb-echoing backstory to our lesson in Acts grabbed our group's imagination. While leaders gather to question Peter and the apostles on a repeat offense of healing and teaching in the name of a risen Jesus, the detail sent to fetch them from jail finds the cell empty! The officers stand around the cell block, scratching their heads. They press for answers, probe for rational explanation. No, the doors are all securely bolted just as we left them. The sentries are still standing at their posts ... but guarding an empty cell. In the midst of reporting these perplexing findings to the powers that be, someone shows up to announce, "Hey! Those guys you locked up last night? I just saw them standing in the middle of the Temple, preaching!"

How can that be? Sure enough, it is. We are told that an angel sprung them, ordering them to go tell everything they knew about "this Life." The exasperation of the Jewish leaders, appointed by occupying Rome, is evident: Don't these troublemakers understand the realities? They've pushed the powers that be past their boiling point.

Peter once again gives a simple sermon: God won't stay in human boxes. The good news of Jesus fulfills the scriptures. Jesus wasn't in the tomb any more than we were in prison, but loose in the world telling the story of the resurrection. We are living emblems of this Life. You're fearful the blood of his death will fall on you? But this is what we know about this Life: that in repentance and forgiveness of sins, even the blood won't stick where it should, because of the power of new life in this God-loosing.

Our reading from Revelation points to the deeper truth and reality of whose rule is to be served: the Alpha and Omega. The blood won't stick because it is the very blood that liberates us, in love. Nevertheless, we are invited to probe our own collusion in Jesus' suffering and death. When we are brought to the throne all the tribes of the earth will wail at the marks and scars of the one who is pierced by human hatred and violence.

Our group wonders: If we had a true vision of the way we have pierced and wounded Jesus in neglecting the stranger, in cruelties even with loved ones, would this help us change our lives now? Could I, as the preacher, hold up this challenging vision in a wake-up call that presses toward our resistance? sound a call of repentance (for the day is coming) and provoke an anxiety, an agitation toward a new kind of life supported by a peace that God is all in all? offer reassurance that, if we probe with faith the mystery of this wounded resurrected one, we would come to know deeply that what awaits us is worth the present struggle and is, indeed, already present?

Thomas, our twin, wants to press into the depths of things until he reaches the point where it resists. Thomas wants to probe for the truth of the resurrection, climb into the open flesh of Jesus as body ... and perhaps as Lord ... honestly admitting he just doesn't know. Our group presses deeply into the wounded world, the places we see, touch, and feel the scars of Jesus' wounded body today. We press the war in Iraq, and its liberation?/occupation?. We press the bodies of four adopted boys found starved nearly to death. We press, not far, until we feel their bones, the point where we find resistance. We're not strong enough to deal with all these wounds of the world, but Jesus is. Our risen, pierced Savior lives. This is the peace of the Second Sunday of Easter.

Pastoral Reflection

Three days after Mom's funeral I rode with her body to the crematorium. Tedi hadn't wanted to be cremated, but she did want to be buried with my sister Amy. So there it was, and, like all the hard journeys of the last six months save one, I went with her. The driver and I made conversation. He'd taught with Mom and had been honored to wheel her out of the house at sunrise just a week before. He thought I should get one of those "companion" urns, so I could always keep a part of her with me. But she didn't want that. She'd wanted to be a whole body, after all, and she'd wanted to be with Amy in the ground waiting for Jesus. So a companion urn was out.

They were waiting for me at the Alpha Crematory. Our funeral director had told them I would be interested in pressing the button they'd wired specially so loved ones could start the cremation process themselves. Later I found out that I was only about the third person in thousands to take advantage of this innovation. If the reaction of my brother and sister (who couldn't even understand what I was doing there at all) was any indication, I could see why it hadn't been that popular.

But the folks at Alpha said they would be happy to show me anything I wanted to see. I asked if I could see my Mom, and of course, I could. The cardboard cremation liner which had rested inside the wooden rental casket was less flimsy than I'd feared. Without the little casket sheet I could see the boots I'd put on her. They were her confident striding boots, her putting-her-best-foot-forward boots. I told them I wanted to look for an earring I had lost the night of the wake, when we'd closed the coffin. I did look for it, but it wasn't there, and I knew I was really looking for something else I'd lost when we'd closed the coffin. But I knew that wouldn't be there, either.

So I apologized to the director for my interest, my need to be so hands-on, as it were. I tried to find words to explain that, while I hadn't wanted this life experience, as long as it had been handed to me I wanted to experience it as deeply as I could. He cut me off. "You need to put your hands in the marks of the nails." He answered my word-less astonishment: "I come by it honestly. My name is Thomas."

"When you're ready ..." Thomas gestured to the button on the wall. It stood out from the smooth surface. I pressed in, as far as it would go.

I see my husband's father's hand, on a Memorial Day, trimming around the grave-stone of his infant son John, brushing the grass off the stone in a way that feels like a caress, and it breaks my heart. I see my own hand, at the gravesite where Mom will be buried, on my sister's casket. It is smooth and silky and warm from the July sun, and it is the closest I can get to touching her flesh just one last time. Here it is, perhaps: you don't press very deeply into stone and metal before meeting resistance, and you can't get to the flesh beneath them at all. And yet. My mother's ashes are so warm on my lap on the way home, warm as a breath. Easter peace. The splintered sunrise of the Second Sunday of Easter.