John 20:19-23
Pentecost - Year A
Who have progressive Christians been fearful of? Loud people who have clarity about G*D and tell others so, and being like that ourselves. We are so aware of process and doubt that we let a lot of junk about G*D go by without a challenge. We have thought that to be effective we have to fight fire with fire and be as obnoxious as those who think they have a corner on the G*D market.
Into this fear comes the word of "Peace to you." We see the crucifixion wounds and know that fear is just fear and we are called to act in the face of fear, to act from the place of peace.
Guess what? we, too, can be exuberant in a sense of peace that allows us to re-enter a conversation with G*D from a partner position. This is what it means for us to be sent - to simply use the gifts given us. These gifts come from and result in an ever-widening circle of peace to you, and you, and you ....
We don't have to fight the fear-full ones. We simply need to know our peace and live our peace. It was this peace of which Jesus understood himself to be a vessel. It is this peace that as his sisters and brothers we also contain. This peace will continue to be the touchstone of G*D's partners.
Pentecost - a day of receiving and passing on the peace of G*D by going beyond our fear into our life.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/may2002.html
Eugene Peterson in "The Message" puts it this way, "If you forgive someone's sins, they're gone for good. If you don't forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?"
The first striking thing about this is the question about how sins are to be dealt with ? they are to be forgiven, no ifs, ands, or buts about it (what can you do with sins if you don't forgive them?). A simple equation that is not so simple because we can come up with every excuse in the book to avoid that one simple response.
Standing behind this is the bold statement that forgiveness transforms sins ? they are gone, for "good." Is your life going, for good? Imagine that - out of sin comes good. Now this is not a straight-forward process and yet as much as sin abounds, grace abounds the more. Forgiveness is not a forgettable experience - it is as revolutionary and as explosive as e=mc(2). The transformation of the past into a new future of today is linked to the exponent of forgiveness (70x7) which is even greater than a mere squaring of the speed of light.
T=PF(490) -- Today equals Past times Forgiveness to the (70x7)th
Want to participate in a building a new kingdom? Forgive. It is the multiplying constant in the gift of life.
Forgive God, forgive your neighbor as you forgive yourself, forgive one another, and forgive your enemy.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/may2002.html
Forgiveness is drinking deep of thirst-quenching life. Forgiveness revives both the forgiver and the forgiven, the forgiven and the forgiver, in whichever order the mystery of forgiveness occurs.
This is a participation in the carrying on and deepening of the acts of Jesus. Here greater works are done. We have it available to us to bind ourselves and others together, mutually. There are some who would claim this is greater than having that binding take place from the outside, as though someone else's forgiveness would take precedence over that of the parties involved.
So with Peace breathed into us we are energized to move from Peace-made to Peace-makers. Enjoy the journey.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/may2005.html
How manifold are G*D's works! So many languages, so many gifts, so many prophesies, so many locked doors walked through, so many "Peace"s, so many breaths, so many rivers of living water.
This is a time to remember how these have been loosed in the past, to talk about how they are currently ebbing and flowing all around us, and to anticipate more blessings than can be counted.
While we can get caught up in the mechanisms of all this we are basically dealing with a song of hope and faith and love all mixed up in its themes and meters and keys.
A part of our task is to stand and proclaim, "What you are experiencing is real - don't deny it by blaming it on excess of one kind or another." More is going on than this world knows.
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languages speak what they know
today is a day to focus on what we are saying
how we are saying what we are saying
going beyond whom we usually say what we say
there is a drive to communicate
we will even learn another language if need be
we will talk with our hands and our eyes
until our tongue connects with an ear
in camp or out of room
we will join gift to gift
forgiving past separations
calling Peace where there is none
until there is
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html
Shifting gears from Mark and its abrupt ending with three women running away, scared and silent, we turn to John's storyline following a triumphant Jesus who was above his own crucifixion.
Rather than meeting the disciples in Galilee as per Mark, here Jesus preemptively visits ten fearful men hiding behind closed doors.
Since they didn't hear it from a messenger, as the Marys and Salome did in Mark, Jesus is his own messenger, his own heavenly host, announcing peace in a most dramatic fashion.
Even though this passage is traditionally thought of as about Doubting or Absent Thomas, we might consider it on John's terms – it is about Jesus, Peace, Forgiveness, and Sign-Stories (preludes to commissioning or putting the disciples back in the game) of real and eternal life, not the skittery, temporary picture they had been living out of (literally, living out of).
Jumping from Mark's completely incomplete story to John's neat wrap gives a moment of disorientation. Hopefully, with our corpus callosum intact, we can see both these stories and rub them together for sparks adding to our benefit rather than have them be mutually exclusive.
On a day after Sabbath, Mark roils the deep before a creating and John moves with breath over the dark and creation not only lingers but goes on again. [Here is the music that inspired this paragraph – one of my all-time favorites and so I think it is worth four-and-a-half minutes of your time.]
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Song Link Clarification
After posting the comment on John it became clear that the reference to the music needed an additional word. If you are interested in the "Song of the Seals", after arriving at the site it will be important to click on the little triangle next to number 6 - Song of the Seals. Of course you are welcome to listen to the whole album, but it was that track that was intended to be referenced.
Click here for album and then click 6 for Song of the Seals.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html
Here is a reference to the humor of Jesus and Thomas. It is from Early Christian "Heresies" of the East. Later it is made safe by "imitating Christ" (an important insight for its time and still an important first step for many that keeps "twinning" within the institution).
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. . . Like most spiritual communities, the relocated Jewish Christians suffered from factionalism. All they seemed to do was multiply and divide. One community went on to become the Ebionites, who became more and more legalistic until they finally died out in the fourth century.
But much longer lived were the St. Thomas Christians, who after James' death, followed another of Jesus' brothers, Judas Thomas. Also known as "doubting Thomas," Judas Thomas was the author of the canonical epistle of Jude, and was the only one of Jesus' brothers who was also an apostle.
But wait, there's more! Not only was Thomas Jesus' brother, but the writings of the Jewish Christians make it very clear that he was Jesus' TWIN brother! Of course that had to be covered up by the Pauline churches, as one could not have a virgin birth if Jesus was born as a twin--unless of course, Thomas was divine, too!
Like other Jewish Christians, the Thomas school of Christianity attached no importance to Jesus' death, nor entertained any mythology regarding his miraculous birth. Instead, they focused directly on his teaching, believing that embedded in his koan-like proverbs were the secret of eternal life. Indeed, the Gospel of Thomas starts off by saying that whoever finds the secret to the sayings contained within would never die.
For these Christians, Jesus is simply a teacher who had achieved unitive consciousness, and was keenly aware of his union with divinity. Through his teachings he tried to awaken his listeners from their spiritual slumbers and make them likewise aware of their unity with all things. According to them, Jesus did not teach anything about some coming kingdom or imminent apocalypse. Instead, when his disciples asked him when the kingdom would arrive with power, he answered them by saying, "The Kingdom of God is spread out upon the earth, and human beings simply do not see it." He also told them, "Do not listen to those who tell you the kingdom is in the sky, for then the birds of the air will precede you. Likewise do not pay any attention to those who say it is in the sea, for then the fish will get there before you do. Instead, the kingdom is inside you AND it is outside you."
Now this is a great example of Jesus' humor, as no one that I know of ever said that the kingdom of God was in the ocean, but it also reveals his deeply mystical approach to religion. The kingdom is in all of us, and is all around us. We are surrounded by, filled with, bathed in God. Oneness is the primary theme in the Gospel of Thomas, and much like the Buddha, Jesus did not seem to think that it was something that could be taught, but only experienced by the disciple directly. According to Thomas, the goal for the disciple is to also be Jesus' twin; in other words to gain the unitive consciousness that Jesus enjoyed and thereby also become God's son or daughter.
Now, this sounds so much like Buddhism that we have to ask--how did Jesus know this stuff? Contemporary bible scholars contend that he Gospel of Thomas is more reliable than any of the canonical Gospels, so this is not a question we can easily dismiss. Did he, as some contend, actually visit India as a child? Probably not, but we do know that there were Buddhist missionaries in Palestine in Jesus' time, so it is not unlikely that Jesus picked up a little Buddha with his regular diet of Moses, leading to not only his own enlightenment, but an amazing new school of Buddhist thought in Jewish guise.
Now the St. Thomas Christians eventually died out in Syria, but inexplicably, they thrived in India. Probably it is because the Thomas school taught doctrines very similar to what was already known in India, and was more easily inculturated than Pauline forms of Christianity. The Thomas Christians in India, in fact, believe that Thomas himself brought the good news of the kingdom to their land.
The tale is told that Gundaphorus, king of some province or other of India, wrote to Jesus and asked him to recommend an architect to build his palace. Now, I wasn't aware--and maybe you weren't either--that Jesus of Nazareth was considered such an expert in exotic architecture that distant kings contacted him for referrals. But that is the tradition, anyway. So Jesus tells his brother to make the journey.
Now this story is not as far-fetched as it sounds. The Mar Thoma Catholic Church in India traces its beginnings all the way back to the very first century, and it is their contention that it was indeed St. Thomas who first brought them the Gospel. Unfortunately not much is known about the early period of this church, since in the twelfth century the Portuguese made the first attempts to colonize India, and coerced the Mar Thoma church into compliance with Roman Catholic belief and practice, which had previously been completely alien to them. All of their ancient prayer books, sacramentaries, and theological writings were burned by the Portuguese, and today we are left with precious little evidence regarding the origins, theologies, and liturgies of the Mar Thoma Christians; a great loss not only for Christianity, but for historians of religion in general. The Mar Thoma Christians still proudly proclaim Thomas as their founder, even though their distinctive theology has been denied them.
What a story, huh? The Jewish Christians in general, and the Thomas Christians in particular are an important reminder that it is the victor who gets to write history, and sometimes the real pearls get lost among the sands of time.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/april2006.html
As the Jesus story winds down in John we hear parallels: "Peace be with you" and "Receive the Holy Spirit"; "God, through Christ, sends us forth" and "Forgive sins, retain sins." These remind us of parallelism with the beginning of Jesus' story: "In the beginning the word was Good/God" (peace, spirit) and "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (sent, take away).
The peace of a good beginning is still present, receive it. Forgiving or retaining sins are not equal acts as there is a beginning bias toward forgiving.
May our peaceful spirit lead us to repent our retention and sin no more, or, at the storyteller puts it:
Once there was a painter who was very poor. When his parish church needed repainting the members of the congregation and the church elders got together and when bids were considered for the job, offered him the job because while his bid was not the lowest it was close and he was of their congregation. So the painter bought paint for the job and set to work. When he got about three quarters of the job finished it became apparent that he wouldn't have enough paint. Well his bid was about as low as he could go and so he decided to thin his paint some so that it would spread farther. Well he got about half of the remainder done and concluded that he would have to thin what he had left just a little and his paint would stretch to cover the whole church.
Unfortunately, that night a terrible storm came to the town and when the painter was awakened by the crash of thunder he realized the thinned paint wouldn't stick to walls of he church and would be washed away. Well then the painter is panicked and he realizes that he has betrayed the trust put in him by his neighbors and that he will be shamed in front of everyone.
As soon as the next day has dawned, he rushed out of the house to the church and sees all of the thinned paint covering the lawn in front of the church. Faced with humiliation and possible ruin of his business, he does what is only natural and falls down on his knees and prays.
"God," he says, "please forgive me and help me to see the error of my ways." Just then the heavens open above him and he is bathed in a pearly radiance from above. A voice can be heard in the sudden stillness of the morning that rings as if it comes from Heaven itself. God speaks to the painter and says: "Repaint and thin no more!
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/april2006.html
If you forgive, forgiveness is. If you don't, it isn't.
Thomas then comes and says, "Nyah." to their experience. Can the disciples forgive this breach of not only conduct, but relationship?
The rest of them apparently learned the art of forgiveness for, a week later, there was Thomas again. If they hadn't learned would Thomas have been with them?
This is as great a miracle as the appearance of Jesus with his holes.
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Ed (Reader)
The fact that we believe in a bodily resurrection means that we live in the present, with Christ in the present. The material world is important to God and Advocacy is part of participating in the world in the present.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/april2003.html
It is good to see that Thomas is still a part of the group even though he did not have the same experience as the others and called their experience into question by not letting it substitute for his own. Would that the church today had the same grace to incorporate such a variety of religious experiences.
Do you really think that those who do not see or experience can come to believe? They can certainly be taught the language of what others have seen and experienced, but can they thus come to believe without doing an injustice to the process whereby the first folks came to their belief? Doesn't this approach come close to a rigid creedalsim that will eventually have to fall apart because it demands more than can be honestly given - assent to a belief structure not experienced.
Let's continue to work on expanding the community beyond our comfort level and rejoice when folks come to their own epiphany.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/april2003.html
The United Methodist tagline on their publicity for the last several years has been, "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors - the People of the United Methodist Church" Many times this is false advertising, but it does indicate a significant desire.
Jesus, we say, has opened the gates of heaven to us and all. The Church, we understand, has closed those same doors to one group after another only to have them eventually reopened after hundreds or thousands of years. It is difficult to reconcile these different trajectories.
For today it may be important to return to the song "Imagine" by John Lennon
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
In this imagination the doors of fear might be unlocked and then opened. --Fear for our own survival and that of those close to us. --Fear of someone transgressing some great principle/creed or other. --Fear of questions rather than for answers.
This imagination comes from the Holy Spirit that opens the door for sin that they might leave and the same door that our questions might enter for a response that moves them to a larger question.
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Lon (Reader)
Aloha Wesley,
I have been behind it with a work group, visitors, and a party. Your work has helped me. I will be helping others address our own UCC issues of whose in and whose out on Thursday, your manao, thinking, helps me to remember when we oil the hinges the doors just might swing both ways according to Jesus.
Blessings, Lon
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Lydia (Reader)
Can there be faith without doubt? Thomas asked for proof and Jesus gave it to him. Jesus can take all our doubts. Doubting is OK, it's perhaps even healthy. Yet Jesus acknowledges that the non-doubter is more fortunate or blessed. Believing without seeing is often considered foolish and naive. We always want proof. We want proof that prayer works. We want to understand why it works. Above all we want proof that God exists. Jesus is proof that God exists. Nature is proof that God exists. The smile of a baby is proof that God exists. Yet we always want more proof. The proof is all around us, but most of the time we opt to doubt.
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Wesley (Blogger)
I am well aware of being behind, myself. [How many ways can that be read?] Blessings upon your work with your part of the larger Christian tradition. Now it is finally time to post my daily reflection that has been much belated. To modify the sign at the entrance of Jung's house - "Behind or not, G*D is present."
Persistence to us both and all who need such.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/april2004.html
Breath comes in. Rivers of living water flow out.
This is not a closed system of breath in and breath out or a water cycle from rain to evaporation to rain. There is a shift that goes on between Chapter 20 and Chapter 7 (and, yes, it would look different reading them in a different order).
The shift here is from potential to kinetic energy. Creation (G*D/Jesus) imbues us with potential and we await the trigger to action. The Spirit urges us to choose to let our potential loose even if that sets entropy in motion and we find ourselves entirely dispersed.
The trigger point is choice. Will we choose to continue to be pure potential or will we get our hands and conscience dirty with action? Of course it is never quite this clear a choice, but, for argument's sake, there is no religion but social religion, no holiness but social holiness. What is breathed in as personal religion or holiness must flow forth as social religion and social holiness.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/may2005.html
What is recorded in the scriptures has a rhetorical purpose - to persuade you to orient your heart and life in a particular direction. It would be good to have that up front rather than at the tail end of this significant passage regarding the continuance of people’s experience of Jesus past the mystery of an empty tomb.
A key, because it is prominently mentioned twice is the issue of “Peace", “Relax”, “Settle down”, “Chill”, or whatever the latest word is to reduce tension. Tension only heightens battle lines and is not helpful in relationships unless it is used to further investigate the relationship and resolve the particular tension at hand.
Secondary is the issue of “belief”. Here it is evidence based belief that shapes a direction of action. At this remove we have turned the action into a correct answer to a confirmation regimen or assent to membership. Our divorcing of belief from action is one of the hallmarks of a hierarchical institution and/or fundamentalistic literalism.
So, hooray for Peace. Hooray for action based on experience. Use care regarding free-floating belief.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/06/john-2019-31.html
We so enjoy the story of Thomas à Doubter because we imagine that we would never be so slow. We would have been in the first wave of disciples who, while fearful of the authorities, were so quick to be joyful after seeing the marks of death. Thomas, reasonably, wanted to see such marks for himself.
If we stop the story before Thomas it is very much a proto-Pentecost passage—a closed room, a fearful people, a word of peace/a filling of Spirit, a breath/a wind, a sending, a forgiveness/a building new relationships across old divides of language.
This raises a question, “What today is a proto-tomorrow?”
“Well, if you want to look at it that way!” - - “Today.”
So this day anticipates a fuller life? Hmm? So, invest more today? Yeah, I guess. Well, invest more forgiveness? OK, “Yes.”
And you?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/06/john-1919-23.html