Jesus arrived by boat in the region of the Gerasenes, opposite Galilee. Gentile country. Outsiders to Israel. He came to seek and to save the lost, even if the lost were not the lost of Israel. His greeting party was a naked man who was possessed by a literal “legion” of demons. He was homeless. He lived in the caves where the tombs were. The townspeople had seized him and put him in shackles, but he broke them and fled to the wilderness. He came to greet Jesus.
Forgiveness and love go together. The one who is forgiven much, loves much. The one who is forgiven little, loves little. So it stands to reason that it would be to our advantage to be in the maximum forgiveness receiving place so that we might love much. It also stands to reason that the reason we may not love as much as we could or should is that we don’t realize how forgiven we are. Of course, that would require a good hard look at our Sin, and we all know that it’s easier to look at the sin of others than it is our own.
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.