Sermon 4/18/2021
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Sermon Easter 3B 2021
Theme: Wonder and Witness
Title: Faith Seeking Understanding
Scripture: Luke 24:36b - 48
While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.
It is the third Sunday of Easter. Today we are continuing our sermon series on Witness and Wonder. Last week Shelby shared with you one of her favorite Easter traditions, cascarones, confetti filled Easter eggs. One of my favorite Easter traditions is Holy Humor Sunday. I am still grumpy that this is the second year in a row we had to cancel Holy Humor Sunday. So, in honor of the season I am going to start things off with one of my favorite jokes.
It was Palm Sunday but because of a sore throat, 5-year-old Jacob stayed home from church with a sitter. When the family returned home, they were carrying several palm branches. Jacob asked them what they were for.
"People held them over Jesus' head as he walked by," his father told him.
"Wouldn't you know it," Jacob whined, "the one Sunday I don't go and he shows up."
I can relate a little to Jacob’s frustration. We read all of these accounts during Easter of Jesus’ showing up after his resurrection and it can begin to feel like because we weren’t there, we have missed out. Perhaps this is why I really appreciate Luke’s account of Jesus’ resurrection. Luke’s version of Jesus’ death and resurrection focuses a lot on the disciples’ confusion and struggle to come to grips with the resurrection.
Luke includes six different episodes of Jesus’ resurrection. Today’s passage is the next to last account.
Let’s set the stage:
In scene one, Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary mother of James return from the empty tomb to tell the 11 that they had talked with two men in dazzling robes who said Jesus was risen. But it seemed like an idle tale and the disciples did not believe them. But Peter did run out to the tomb, found it empty and returned home “amazed”. Cleopas and another disciple encountered a man while on their walk to Emmaus. As he talked to them about the scriptures concerning the Messiah their hearts were burning within them. When they stopped to break bread together their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus, who promptly vanished from their sight. So they aborted their trip and rushed back to where the rest of the disciples were hiding out together. They arrived full of joyful excitement about their encounter with Jesus. They returned to discover the rest of the disciples discussing how Jesus had appeared to Simon Peter. This is where we find them at the start of today’s passage, discussing among themselves all of these bewildering but hopeful accounts of Jesus sightings. When all of a sudden Jesus appears in their midst and says “Peace be with you.”
As I said at the outset, what I really love about Luke’s account is how relatable the reaction of the disciples is. It’s like a play by play of their struggle to make sense of what is going on. Poof - Jesus seems to just show up out of nowhere. The disciples are honestly freaked out - is this a ghost? what is happening?! Jesus says - why are you freaking out, it’s really me, here touch me, see the scars on my hands and feet. The disciples’ initial terror is replaced by joy - but they still aren’t really sure what to believe, they’ve got some hesitation and confusion. So Jesus says, “You got anything to eat around here?”, and takes a bite of fish so they can see that he is really truly himself in the flesh and not some kind of ghost.
Out of this whole dramatic scene - my favorite moment comes in verse 41, “In their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.” It is this amazing moment that contains both joy and confusion, faith and wonder. I want to spend the rest of my reflection focusing on this moment and what it teaches us about how we make sense of Jesus’ resurrection for ourselves.
The first thing I think it teaches us is that Jesus meets us right where we are in the midst of our questions. We should interpret Jesus’ words and actions as an invitation to be honest about our doubts and struggles. When you imagine Jesus asking, “Why are you frightened? Why do doubts arise in your hearts?”, we should hear this not as an accusation but rather as Jesus welcoming us to take our questions directly to Jesus who longs to reveal himself to us.
The second important insight it offers is a deeper understanding of the role of Wonder in our life of faith. We are going to encounter this word “Wonder”, or “thambous” in Greek, a lot over the next several weeks because it comes up a lot in the post resurrection stories of the early church. Wonder is one of those great words that contains depths of meaning. It signifies amazement, awe and astonishment as well as pondering and contemplation. In fact, this one word “Wonder” perfectly sums up the key aspects of our life as followers of Jesus.
Wonder combines what Anselm, the most prominent Christian theologian of the 11th century, referred to as “Faith Seeking Understanding”. Wonder is “an active love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of God.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anselm/#FaiSeeUndChaPurAnsThePro
While in that state of wonder, Jesus talked with the disciples. “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” (v. 45)
I would argue that one of the best ways we can approach the study of scripture is from the perspective of wonder. What does that mean exactly to approach scripture this way? In order to explain what it is, I need to begin by explaining what it is not.
The truth is, what we get out of our reading of scripture has a whole lot to do with how we approach scripture.
If we approach scripture looking for moral teachings, we will take the stories and boil them down to helpful nuggets of wisdom that we can apply to our life in the real world.
If we approach scripture from a dogmatic perspective, we will seek to determine the “right” answers of what we should think and believe so that we can avoid the wrong ones.
But if we approach scripture from a place of wonder: a love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of God, we are much more likely to encounter the Living Christ. In fact, I would argue that in the first two approaches to scripture Jesus is somewhat superfluous or unnecessary to the effort. But in this last way of reading scripture, Jesus is at the very center of the endeavor. It is an encounter with the living Christ that we seek through the words on the page. There is a reason that John refers to Jesus himself as The Word. We are meant to interpret all of the words of scripture through The Word, Jesus Christ; through his life, death and resurrection. Just as he sat down and opened the scriptures to his first disciples, so we too ought to appeal to Jesus to help us each time we sit down to read the Bible.
If you are feeling disinterested in reading the Bible, perhaps it has to do with the way you have been approaching it. I encourage you to take another look through the eyes of wonder.
Wonder:
The nature of wonder is not a force that pushes us passively from behind; it is situated ahead of us and attracts us with irresistible force towards the object of our astonishment; it makes us advance toward it, filled with enchantment.
This quote was actually written by a well regarded scholar and author who specialized in the faith formation of children, Sofia Cavalletti. Dr. Cavalletti was a Hebrew scholar who helped develop the curriculum known as the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd that is deeply rooted in the Montessori method of instruction and aims to help children have a “living encounter with the living God”. As Maria Montessori correctly ascertained, children have an innate sense of spiritual curiosity and wonder. Therefore the best place to begin spiritual formation and understanding is by exploring these wondering questions with children. Her methods were adapted by Jermone Berryman who developed the program of religious instruction for children known as Godly Play or Worship and Wonder. In both programs, when telling bible stories to children, teachers are trained to engage their young listeners by asking a series of wondering questions.
Over the next few weeks of this Easter season we will be examining the crucifixion and resurrection stories from the scriptures. Like the first disciples, we will be wrestling with how to make sense of them for ourselves. I want to invite you to reexamine these accounts from a place of Wonder, of faith seeking understanding. Take time during the week to read and contemplate on your own. Wonder requires unhurried time of solitude and silence. Something we can’t accomplish during our time of worship.
For me, as I have been studying these familiar passages again this year - what I have found most astonishing is the way that Jesus chose to respond to the lies and violence waged against him. Perhaps it is because I am so troubled by the recent events in our world that reveal the human capacity for violence and self deception.
I’ve been wondering, genuinely questioning: Why would God submit to the forces of lies and violence in the world? Why does Jesus not use the power and authority at his disposal to dominate and destroy; to reveal the lies and stop the violence?
My wondering led me to this: that Jesus saw, what I often overlook, that behind all of this structural evil are human hearts, human minds and human bodies who have been corrupted by the teachings of this world. Who think that winning and power are the goal and that domination at all costs is the means to achieve that goal.
In his crucifixion and resurrection Jesus shows us a very different way. Not only does Jesus refuse to play by the rules of the system (You may recall at one point Pilot tells Jesus that he has the power to kill or save him in his hands - Jesus responds to this with silence.) But Jesus changes the rules completely. To lose is to win, to die is to live. Jesus shows us that the only way to resist and overcome these forces is with love and forgiveness.
In the human body of the crucified Son, God has definitively removed the veil and shown the world what God’s reign actually looks like. A giving away of self that answers the violence and self-centeredness of the world with forgiveness. A power made perfect in weakness, suffering the infliction of evil to disarm and swallow it up in the ever-greater divine love. -Br. Sean Glenn of the Society of St. John the Evangelist
I believe that when we spend time in the presence of the crucified and risen Christ, when we gaze on his wounds with wonder, we cannot help but be moved with compassion to go out and bear witness to what we have seen.
There have actually been some fascinating studies conducted about the relationship between wonder and acts of compassion.
In one experiment, researchers asked a group of university students on the campus at Berkeley to look up at either a tall building or a grove of towering eucalyptus trees for one minute. They found that students who studied the trees experienced more feelings of awe—a sense of wonder and of being in the presence of something larger than oneself. Afterwards, when one of the experimenters pretended to accidentally drop a bunch of pens, the students who had seen the trees and felt awe helped pick up more pens than those who had looked at the building.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_trees_can_make_you_happier
If this encounter with nature led these individuals to a greater sense of wonder, well-being, humility and compassion just think what can come out of our encounter with the living Christ we experience when reading the scriptures from the perspective of wonder. The more time we spend learning about the life and teachings of Jesus, the greater our amazement and joy, the more sincere our repentance and the more complete our sense of forgiveness and freedom.
Witness -
“Wonder does not drive us to activism but draws us into activity, to an activity we do as persons immersed in the contemplation of something that exceeds us. Maybe the particularity of wonder is that we find activity and contemplation inseparably blended within in.” p. 13-139 The Religious Potential of the Child, Sofia Cavalletti