The younger the person, the greater the crowd at the funeral. It’s almost a hard and fast rule. When the young die, there is a heightened sense of outrage and grief. There is no “life well lived,” no litany of life achievements, no triumphal obituaries, no sense of “mission accomplished” at the end of a long life or “I did it my way” swagger. There is only a sense of tragedy, hopelessness, despair, unfairness. Where was God to help? Why did God let this happen? When the young person is the only son of a widowed mother, the tragedy is squared. He was her only son, the joy of her life, all that she had left, her only source of support. And now he was dead and she had to do what no mother wants to do. Bury her child. The grief was as great as the crowd that had gathered.
We call him “doubting Thomas," don’t we, even though the text we just heard from John’s gospel never used the word “doubt.” It’s one of those many cases of our reading into the Scripture something that isn’t there. No one, including Jesus, said that Thomas doubted. Doubt wasn’t Thomas’ problem. Unbelief was. You might say Thomas let his doubts get in the way of his faith, and that was the problem. And so Jesus doesn’t say, “Thomas, stop doubting.” He says, “Thomas stop disbelieving and believe.” There is a difference.
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
Today is Easter Sunday, the Sunday of the Resurrection. You already know that, because you’re here. This is the day when we, together with all Christians, proclaim to one another and to the world that Jesus Christ who was crucified for the sin of the world rose bodily from the dead. It is NOT, as you sometimes hear, the “day Christians celebrate their belief that Jesus rose from the dead.” The resurrection of Jesus, His empty tomb, the eyewitness appearances, are not matters of faith. They are matters of fact. The fact is that Christ rose from the dead. The faith is that as in Adam all die so in Christ will all be made alive. That is a matter of faith. But the resurrected body of Jesus is a matter of fact.
“He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53
It would be easy and tempting for us to gawk at those wounds like so many looky-loos rubbernecking past an accident on the side of the road. You don’t want to look and yet you do. Morbid curiosity. Gratefully, the evangelists all spared us the graphic details of Jesus’ crucifixion. What matter is that He was crucified. The details of which need not be brought to light, as they were in the film “The Passion of the Christ.” It’s not the “what” of those wounds that matter. We are not here for a medical diagnosis. It’s the “why” of these wound that matter. He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our inquity.
“Do this in remembrance of me,” and in remembrance of me, do this.
Tonight is about remembrance. Remembrance in the Scriptures is more than calling to mind or thinking about something in the past. Remembrance is being a part of something that happened before you came along. The Passover was a remembrance meal, a meal in which Israel not only remembered what God had done in freeing them from slavery in Egypt but also a participation in the Exodus. It was not simply the night when God freed our forefathers, it was a night when God freed us. We weren’t there, but in the Passover, the Exodus becomes ours and we become part of it.
A few Lenten seasons ago, a colleague and friend of mine did a Bible study series entitled “The Seven Deadly Sins and How to Commit Them.” I don’t plan to use that approach in our Wednesday evening gatherings, but the topic of the “seven deadly sins” does serve as a good penitential topic for this penitential season. And since we have only five weeks to cover them, we might call this “Five of the Seven Deadly Sins” or perhaps, with a little doubling up, we can cover all seven.
Last week’s deadly sin was “gluttony.” Tonight’s is sloth, or in the Latin, acedia. “Sloth” is really a misnomer, as the animal by the same name may be slow, but it is anything but lazy. Sloth is physical laziness, spiritual laziness, indifference, boredom, apathy, couch potato-ness. It is a sin of omission, a failure of vocation, a failure of duty and responsibility, a failure to exercise the gifts from God in service of God and neighbor.
Greed is idolatry. The Scriptures could not be more plain. Greed is not an action but an orientation. It goes the the idolatrous heart that is unbuckled from the fear, love, and trust in God above all things. Greed is the fear, love, and trust in all things above God. Jesus said, “You cannot serve two masters. You will love one and hate the other, serve one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Money.” St. Paul said, “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” Not money, the love of money. Money-love.
Wrath is a reflex action of old Adam. Don’t get mad, get even. Get your “pound of flesh.” “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life.” You can even quote the Bible on that and justify yourself with it. If your enemy strikes you on the cheek, punch him in the nose. It’s the law of the jungle. Survival of the fittest. The world of tooth and claw and blood.
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. - 1 Cor 12:27
When you think of the word “church” or “congregation,” what image comes to mind? What word would you use? What analogy best describes it?
The word congregation is the same as the word “synagogue,” much like the synagogue at Nazareth where Jesus preached to the home town folks. A synagogue was a gathering of people around the Word of God, the Torah and prophets. Jesus preached from an assigned text of Isaiah. The people came together at a synagogue to hear the Word and its exposition, to sing praises to God, and to pray together. Much like what we do here.