​​3 Easter Year B April 14 2024

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​​3 Easter Year B April 14 2024 St. Martha and Mary, Eagan

Acts 3:12-19, 1 John 3:1-7, Luke 24:36b-48, Psalm 4

 

Let's start with some fantasy casting today shall we? If you were choosing the lead in the next blockbuster about averting the disaster that destroys the earth, who would be the one who saves the world? The James Bond type, like Daniel Craig? The Marvel Hero type, like Captain Marvel herself, maybe Harrison Ford, he’s always good as the hero. Which one of these could play The Messiah, the one who saves the world? Who would be your Fantasy Messiah?

 

You may think I'm being silly here, and maybe I am, but the faithful people of the early 1st century  were waiting with baited breath and wild anticipation for the one, the messiah, who would rescue them out of their predicament, and at the very least, put them into power and vanquish the Romans and the Greeks and the Temple Priests.  

 

And at every turn, Jesus, the messiah they got, was nothing like the Fantasy Messiah they had dreamed about, that they had imagined. Not in life, not in death, not in resurrection. Jesus, the Messiah they got, lived a quiet, nondescript life, grew up to be a teacher, of all things, ended up on a Roman cross, reserved for criminals, and died. To the world, the whole sordid affair looked like failure.

 

And then, after death, Jesus shows up in locked rooms, and on roads to nowhere. Jesus shows up, and just as in life they didn't recognize him as the messiah, in death they don't recognize him as Jesus, the one who was God in the flesh. The one who is the incarnation. They were terrified and afraid, they thought they were seeing a ghost.

 

They just couldn't believe what they were seeing. Feed me, he says, and he shows them the holes in his flesh. Maybe what Jesus is doing here is showing incarnation again, in the flesh, even after resurrection. Maybe Jesus is showing that God continues to be engaged in mundane activities, like eating. Because the reality here, and in all these stories we hear after Jesus' death on the cross, and the empty tomb, is that hardly anyone believed it. Traditionally, Thomas has gotten the bad rap, but really, very few believe it. In the Gospel of Luke, no one believes it.

 

This is the first time we read Luke this Easter season, so let's take a quick look at it. Those who went to the tomb found the stone rolled away, and when they went in, they did not find the body. The women were terrified, they saw what they thought were two men in dazzling clothes, who helped the women remember what they had been told about what would happen. Then the women remembered Jesus' words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to the rest. In Luke's telling, there were no words of "I have seen the Lord." The response to the women, in Luke's telling,in the Greek, the word that gets translated nonsense, or an idle tale, is the root of our word, delirious. So in response to the testimony of the women, the disciples say they are out of their freakin' minds.  Then, on the same day, two of them were going to Emmaus, while they were on the road, Jesus walked with them and told them stories, and they did not believe that it was Jesus until Jesus ate with them.

 

When we disbelieve, we are in good company. I have never believed that this life of being a follower of Jesus excludes disbelief. The story we live and breathe, the story of incarnation and resurrection, is inconceivable. Made more so when we try desperately to make it all make sense.

 

So what is so compelling about this story that has caused it to be authoritative and enlivening for centuries? The story is true. The story is true. It is true not because it is fact or because it is history. It is true in the way of truth that speaks into the deepest crevices of our broken hearts, it is true in the way of truth that speaks into our deepest joy, it is true in the way of truth that speaks into our deepest hungers that cannot be satisfied by only food, but by food that is shared. Truth is beyond ordinary fact, facts are important but not enough, they do not take you where you need to go.

 

Facts do not take you into the hospital room when you know that your loved one will die. Truth takes you there, the truth of love, the truth of pain, the truth of compassion, the truth that something arises out of it that only your heart knows, words can not.

 

Facts do not take you to the place where you are willing to give your heart to another. Truth takes you there, the truth that together you are so much more than you are alone, the truth that what you want is your beloved's happiness and joy.

 

If even the disciples lived in disbelief, if even the disciples believed all this talk of resurrection is freakin' inconceivable, what makes us think we are any different? It is not up to us anyway to believe and not doubt. Even theology cannot say enough about God to make you believe. It is up to us though, in the midst of darkness and pain, to say yes to love and life. It is up to us, when what looks like loss and failure to say yes to transformation and love and life.

 

Our disbelief does not stop us from following Jesus. Our disbelief does not change the truth that love wins, not power. Belief finally arises out of the reality of our lives. Faith is the acceptance of disbelief, of doubt. Faith is when we come to the place where we can embrace the truth of love, the inconceivability of incarnation, faith is when we can come to the place where we can trudge through the muck and the mess of this life, and know that in it we are not alone. Faith is when we are freed to love ourselves, we are freed to love each other. Faith is when we accept our freedom to love and serve others, and that love bears us up to do what Jesus calls us to do.

 

Faith is not in a fantasy messiah, faith is not in a superhero. Faith is in the love that goes to inconceivable heights and depths to accompany us in all that this life throws at us. And then it is in that place that we discover our own superpower, faith, and hope, and love. 

Blessing - In honor of Roger Payntor, the best preaching professor ever.

May God give you grace not to sell yourself short; 

grace to risk something big for something good; 

and grace to remember the world is now too dangerous 

for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.

And may the blessing of God,

Creator, Redeemer, Spirit 

be with you today and always,

Amen.