If you, like Thomas and the others, can find trust that Christ is risen, it will truly change your life and the life of the world you are in.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday of Easter, year C
Texts: John 20:19-31; Acts 5:27-32

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Thomas has a lot at stake in seeing Jesus for himself.

Whether Thomas can trust his friends isn’t academic. This isn’t theological doubt that has no impact on how you live your life. If Jesus is alive, everything is changed for Thomas. If he’s dead, nothing that used to matter matters. He’s been living in a fog, like the rest of them, since that terrible Thursday and Friday, but now he’s had to hear the others’ excitement and joy for a week, still in a fog himself. What Thomas asks is simple, and fair. I’d like to see Jesus myself.

A risen Jesus, for all of them, is a reality question, not a theological one. Jesus was their friend, their teacher, they believed he was from God. They saw him dead. For real. And no one rises from the dead, except those Jesus raised. If Jesus is dead, it’s all over.

But if he’s alive, everything he taught is real and true and matters. If he’s alive, their lives change forever. If he’s alive, nothing is the same.

That’s what’s at stake for Thomas.

Do we have anything close to as much at stake in what happened?

To start with, for us Jesus’ resurrection is old news. 2,000 years of people have either believed in a risen Christ or not. I’ve heard “Christ is risen indeed!” every year of my life for nearly 6 decades. How can any change hinge on whether you trust Jesus is truly risen and living in the world if you’ve always known it?

And for hundreds of years the Church based all its evangelism on only part of what Christ’s resurrection means, life after death. That is a joy, a truth, a gift, but it’s not the only gift, joy, or truth. It’s a great promise. But once you trust it, life could go on as usual.

Life as usual was never an option for these disciples. A dead Jesus means lost hope, a sense of abandonment by God, a bleak future. A risen Jesus means life, and hope, and joy. God is with you, life has meaning, God’s love fills you and the world and transforms all things.

Can we perceive the resurrection with as much at stake?

Jesus said we who didn’t see this are blessed when we trust without seeing.

John reminds us of that, and says he wrote this whole Gospel as an eyewitness to you and me, to any who read it, to see for ourselves what these people saw and trusted, hoping in that seeing we’d find the same trust.

John’s promise jolts you and me into understanding the raised stakes. He says if you can trust Jesus is the risen Messiah, the Son of God, you can have life in his name. Abundant life, as Jesus promised and wants for all. Life here. Life with hope and purpose, life filled with the Spirit of God. Life-changing life that changes the world.

That’s what’s at stake. Those two Sundays Christ offered a new life to those women and men. Now he offers the same to you.

First, into the disciples’ fear, unstopped by locked doors, Jesus gives peace.

Luke and John say Jesus’ first words the Sunday night of his resurrection to the whole group of disciples were “Peace be with you.” Then he breathed God’s Spirit into them. The next Sunday, when Thomas was there, Jesus’ first words were “Peace be with you.”

That’s what the risen Christ offers you. Peace. Christ breathes the Holy Spirit into your lungs, into your body, God’s Spirit in your spirit, and says, “Be at peace.” So, we heard today, Peter and the others stand before the same council that condemned Jesus and defy the command to be silent about the resurrection. We’re going to obey God, not you, they say. Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they had inner peace even when their lives were threatened, because God’s Spirit was in them. All these believers lived with this peace as they spread the Good News of God’s resurrection life.

Christ is alive. Risen from the dead, he gives to you the peace he promised on the night of his betrayal, breathing the Spirit into you, to give you life as he promised.

That’s why for centuries the Church has included Christ’s giving of peace at every Eucharist. We don’t want to risk forgetting this immense gift that changes our lives, no matter what happens in them – tragedy or joy, mourning or dancing, life or death. We share Christ’s peace with each other and so keep giving the gift.

Second, Jesus gives a life with purpose.

There’s more to this second gift which we’ll hear next week from John 21. But that Easter night, after giving peace and breathing God’s Spirit into them, Jesus sent these women and men out, making them all literally apostles, sent ones. They were sent to forgive the sins of others. To be God’s forgiving love that Jesus showed on the cross.

That’s their purpose now. It’s your purpose, too, your meaning to life. You, as God’s anointed in Baptism, are sent to forgive others for their wrongdoing. Not only those who hurt you. Jesus sends you to offer God’s forgiveness to all, no matter who they’ve wronged. To live a life that proclaims God’s final answer to all sin and brokenness is forgiveness and love.

And if you hold on to, retain, the sins of others, Jesus says, you keep forgiveness from them. Not ultimately – no one has the authority to prevent the Triune God from forgiving anyone. But if you don’t offer God’s forgiveness and love to others, Jesus says they will feel as if they don’t have it at all.

That’s Incarnation. Because humans don’t tend to assume their gods are forgiving, the true God needed to show us in a human, concrete way. The Triune God comes to us with a face – Jesus – to forgive and love us in such a way that we can’t miss it.

And now you and I and all who live in Christ are sent out as God’s forgiving love in the world. So no one doubts God’s grace and love for them. That’s your purpose.

Everything changed with Jesus’ resurrection for these women and men.

They had peace in God’s Spirit within them. They had a purpose, doing Jesus’ job of proclaiming God’s forgiveness. They began to live into Jesus’ promise on the night of his betrayal, that he was the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Now they have a Way to live and walk, because Jesus is risen. The Way of Christly love and grace and forgiveness, living in their Risen Lord who is their Way.

Now they have a Truth that changes everything for them, because Jesus is alive. Not a doctrine of resurrection. A living Truth, God’s love Incarnate, death-breaking, life-giving, peace-pouring Truth to fill them with the Spirit and center their reality in a world of deceit and lies.

And now they have a Life to live, in the Risen Christ who is alive and in the world. A life with meaning and purpose. Abundant life that seeks to bring God’s abundance to all.

That’s what’s at stake, if you can trust that Jesus is God’s risen Christ, God’s Son, the Way, the Truth, and the Life for you and the world. Then you will find everything these disciples found, and more.

And nothing will ever be the same.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God’s new thing in Christ’s resurrection is very hard to comprehend, because everything is changed – but take heart. Others have gone before and show you the way.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Resurrection of Our Lord, year C
Texts: Luke 24:1-12; Isaiah 65:17-25; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26

For the second time in three weeks, Isaiah proclaims to us God’s new creation.

Once again, the Creator of all says, “do not remember the former things,” rather “be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating. A new heavens and a new earth.”

Nature itself is changed in God’s new thing, Isaiah declares. People who die at 100 years will be considered just a youth. War and violence won’t exist: if you build a house and plant the vineyards, you can live and enjoy that fruit.

We hear in Advent, from chapter 11, that the wolf and lamb will lie down together, but here God promises they will eat supper together. So again, nature itself is changed in God’s new thing – wolves have an entirely new nature. It is literally a new creation, with new rules and ways that the world works.

But it’s really hard to grasp such utter newness.

God’s new creation isn’t a friendly amendment, changing a little. Everything we believe is true about how the world works is upended. Predators and prey become beloved to each other. Weeping and death are no more. Peace and justice and safety are absolute: all can live in their homes and prosper.

We who trust in Christ believe this new creation began today, the day of Christ’s resurrection. Everything changed when Christ Jesus broke the power of death. Everything he taught that seemed so impossible by the rules of the world – loving your enemies and neighbors, knowing you are always loved by the Triune God, God’s children living in Christ transforming the whole world into peace and justice through love – all these things are now possible. Real. Because Christ is risen.

If we aren’t a little shaken by Easter’s truth, confused, startled, we need to listen to the Scriptures more deeply. Everything changes today. Everything.

So give these disciples a little slack.

They’ve had a week of seismic changes in how they understood the world to work.

Sunday was exhilarating; Thursday was perplexing, changing to terrifying; Friday was devastatingly unimaginable. Saturday was overwhelming lostness, trying to rebuild some idea of where to go from here. When Jesus died, every hope they had for who he was and what God was doing in him died, too.

So when the faithful women come to the tomb of Jesus and find it open and empty, of course they’re confused. The heavenly messengers sort of unfairly ask why they’re looking for the living among the dead: they couldn’t imagine he was alive. And forgive the male disciples, too, for doubting their sisters. The human mind can only go so far before shutting down.

How could any of them process yet another shift? Friday’s devastating loss forced a total re-evaluation of everything. And now this empty tomb, with the word that Jesus was actually alive?

But they did process it. We can see that from Paul’s words from twenty years later.

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,” Paul says, “we are of all people most to be pitied.” He’s talking about the promise of life after death, but hold that for a moment.

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ” means that some of these Corinthians had faith in Christ for this life alone. That’s what these women and men who first found an empty tomb passed on to the world: everything Jesus taught them about life in Christ here was true. Real.

If Jesus is alive, then self-giving love cannot be stopped even by death. Loving enemies and praying for those who hurt you is possible and will change the world. God’s undying love for you that always searches until you are found is true. Jesus’ promise to be with you always in the Spirit is real and fills you with life and purpose.

They were confused at first, these disciples. But they eventually lived a whole new life, where the rules of how people deal with each other were completely new, changed. It was so different they called it the Way. The Way of Christ – loving, peacemaking, sharing, compassion, self-giving – this was what they found in the risen Christ. Reason to live and to hope here.

So twenty years after the Resurrection, people were coming to faith in Christ for this life, here.

Apparently many didn’t yet believe in a life after death. Paul’s Thessalonians and Corinthians both struggled with this. They had faith in Christ as a hope for this life. And they lived it in Christ. They loved it.

But here Paul says, if the joy of living this new creation Christ in this life – a good thing! – is all you have, you’re missing something. Because in those twenty years, some of the believers began to understand another profound joy of Christ’s resurrection: if Jesus broke death, it was broken for everyone.

And so we, 2,000 years later, come to Easter expecting part of our joy is this promise: death is not the end. Every year, some of us come here with new wounds at the death of someone we love, the pain of their absence, mourning a loss, looking for hope. And once again we hear Paul’s confidence, that Christ is only the first fruits of those who have died. All who die in Christ are raised to new life.

There’s actually hope for you today in the confusion and misunderstanding of these people.

Be patient with yourself if you don’t fully grasp God’s new creation in Christ. If twenty years after the Resurrection the Church was still coming to grips with the utter newness of what God is doing in Christ, don’t be hard on yourself if it takes you time.

But do be ready for everything to change. In a new creation, even wolves have a different nature. The dead don’t stay dead. God’s Spirit inhabits God’s children and they do amazing things.

So take heart: your prejudices and habits that are harmful, the vestiges of the old rules of a racist, sexist, elitist world that some of us find so hard to eliminate, they will be broken down and removed by God’s Spirit. It might take some time. But do know that the old rules have to go in God’s new creation. The struggles to love, especially those who hurt you, and to forgive, these will take time for the Spirit to resolve, but God will. Because those old ways have to go in the new creation. They all do.

And when you doubt God’s love in the face of death, the Spirit will help you trust in the promise of resurrection for all who are in Christ. Including those you love whom you miss so much.

Having everything turned upside down in God’s new creation is a challenge. So is unlearning how the world and our society say things have to work.

But now you know not to look for life in dead places like this world’s way. Now you know that Christ is risen, and everything is changed.

And now you have the comfort that if you and I are a little slow on the uptake, struggling sometimes to see this new creation and live in it, we’ve got good company in these faithful ones who first saw the risen Jesus. And now they’re standing on the sidelines cheering us as we walk our journey into God’s new creation, learning as we go, holding each other’s hands in hope.

Because nothing has ever been the same since that tomb was broken and Christ stepped out. It never will be, thanks be to God.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen