“A Peaceful Presence”

 

By David Colby

Central is now on Facebook. For those not in the loop, Facebook is a social networking website where you can (to use a noun as a verb) “friend” people. It’s a great way to stay in touch with friends in real life through posting pictures and giving brief status updates.

There is a popular preacher in Seattle who uses cutting-edge technology in his sermons. He is, to use a play on words, a bit of a genre-bending preacher – an extremely theologically conservative guy who dresses in grunge and uses R-rated. sermon titles. In recent sermons he has asked the congregation to take out their iPhones and twitter away to their friends during the sermon?. I have no plans to ask you to do that any time soon! But I do want to talk for a minute about Facebook – hang with me for a minute or two!

Facebook facilitates the sudden reappearance of long-lost friends. Close friends from high school I haven’t communicated with in twenty years suddenly show up on my screen. Some look just like they did as seventeen year olds. Others are barely recognizable. The thing is – and the connection to our gospel reading – is to think about how our identity is impacted by the reappearance of old friends.

I did have one awful experience on Facebook when I discovered the death of an acquaintance. I saw comments from others saying they would deeply miss him and only then did I learn that he had died. More than two months later, people were still writing messages to him. One wrote a note that began, “Thought of you today, John,” and ended with, “Hope you are having a blast in the afterlife, old friend.” Part of me wondered if people hoped beyond hope that suddenly they might get a reply back from him. Facebook – where friends suddenly reappear, acquaintances die without leaving a final message and status updates can be confusing to follow. Life on Facebook is unpredictable.

In the Bible, we hear of a similarly unpredictable world in those days immediately following the first Easter. Jesus has died, disappeared from view. Then come reports that he has reappeared whispered from one friend to another. The gospels record a number of resurrection appearances of Jesus. Gary Wills writes that there is “an elusive or uncanny aspect to” these gospel resurrection encounters.

They often do not at first recognize Jesus. He seems paradoxically physical (eating food) yet ghostly (gliding through a door), ordinary (a gardener, a traveler) yet transfigured. Paul, who knows what he is talking about, says that the risen body does not fit any of our expectations.

Even in his presence, the disciples express doubt and disbelief and question his identity. There is usually a “told you so,” moment in which an explanation is given that they should have expected his return, and then Jesus is again gone from their sight.

Each time, the reappearance seems to repeat the suddenness of Easter morning and the fleeting nature of certainty.

That’s how it is with our story today from the Gospel of Luke. It’s actually the third resurrection appearance narrated in quick order. Gathered in Jerusalem all in one place is a whole group of close followers of Jesus: the twelve disciples minus Judas; two who just met the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus and have returned to Jerusalem, the women who had gone to the tomb early that Easter morning, and assorted others. There they were, gathered together, talking about their feelings and these wild reports from the day.

And as they are talking, Luke tells us, “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” (Luke 24:36-37). No longer just stories of surprising reappearances, Jesus is suddenly there among them and they are startled and terrified.

I get the startled. But why were they terrified? I wonder what it was that they had been talking about before being interrupted by the very presence of Jesus.

Obviously they had been sharing the reports of the empty tomb and Jesus appearing to Peter and to the two on the road to Emmaus. Had they been trying to convince themselves the earlier appearances had been some cruel trick of positive thinking – or had they believed the reports and been wondering what this resurrection meant? Did they worry that Jesus might come back mad at them for deserting them? Did they wonder if the resurrection meant that now that death had been defeated Jesus would lead a new band of folks unafraid of martyrdom to once and for all overthrow the Romans and any who had collaborated with their rule? Why were they terrified?

Now that Jesus has been raised from the dead, there is indeed more work to be done in his name. And there are, I believe, at least two clues in this passage as to what that work is for those who will continue to follow in his name. The first clue is in his greeting, “peace be with you.” I assume that the marks of violence have taken its toll even on his resurrected body. “Look at my hands and my feet,” he says to them. He does not use his wounds as a rallying cry. There will be no eye for an eye, hand for a hand, foot for a foot. Not Jesus. His wounds serve as identifying characteristics and his words say, “peace be with you.” His resurrection appearance begins as a peaceful presence, even to those who are startled and terrified. “Could it be” Gregory Jones suggests, “that gentle grace is more important and powerful than violence?”3

The renewed work of this risen Jesus is not to respond to suffering with violence, but to be involved in speaking and creating peace. The Hebrew word he would have used, shalom, means health, welfare, wholeness – we translate that word as peace.

“Peace be with you,” he said to those startled and terrified disciples.

I think about that greeting when I reflect now months later on our ministry during those late summer days of the Republican National Convention. Surrounded by people of passion on all sides. Placed right in the thick of things, where some were spoiling for a fight and others tried to demonstrate that might would be right, we offered water and sanctuary and proclaimed this to be a peaceful presence. We offered some breathing room, away from polarized partisanship. In this peaceful presence, we remembered that the primary identity of those we encountered were not Republicans or Democrats, nor police or protesters – the primary identity of those we encountered were people – people created and called by God. Jesus’ greeting was and is our greeting – “peace be with you.”

The second clue about the continuing purpose of work is found in Jesus’ summary of what he had told them while he had been still with them and his interpretation of scriptures. “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” (Luke 24:46-47). That is, in effect, the “so what” of his rising from the dead on the third day, according to this passage.

The risen Jesus will not lead a coup against the Romans or the temple authorities. The risen Jesus will not seek revenge or punishment for those who had betrayed him. Instead, with his peaceful presence greeting them, he suggests a new way which is the fulfillment of his death and resurrection.

To repent – to turn around and go a different direction. To go in the ways of peace. That is, I believe, the new task for which these disciples, gathered together, are now called to do. To help create a new community of repentance and forgiveness of sins and deep abiding peace. But, like these resurrection stories, it would not be a linear or smooth process.

His reappearance reminded them of when they had first been called and meant that their identity could not be separated from their calling to be agents of his peace. With his reappearance, old hurts are forgiven and new beginnings are possible.

  

Cynthia Gano Lindner, writing about this passage compares the way we narrate the resurrection to the way new parents narrate the birth of a child. And it is with her words that I conclude.

Two thousand years after Christ’s crucifixion, when our violence toward one another has not abated, a collapsing economy exposes the depths and dangers of our own commodification, and our churches doubt their inheritance and their power, we may determine that we are still beyond resurrection’s reach.. . Luke’s Gospel points out that it’s precisely when we’ve pronounced hope dead and prepared the spices for burial that the birth pangs announcing new life are likely to commence.

We make pilgrimage to the tomb of some long-dead dream or desire, only to be surprised by the contractions of resurrection: hope still stirs. We glance up from our daily commute and our eyes meet the eyes of a stranger who nods in a moment of holy recognition: the birth pangs of resurrection, once again. We clasp the weathered hand of an aging loved one or playfully count the toes of a toddler; our hearts break and our hands open when we hear that oh-so-human and oh-so-divine request, “Do you have anything to eat?” We break bread around cafeteria tables, communion tables – and our minds are opened to understand ourselves and our place in the world yet again. We are, all of us, children and heirs of the resurrection – which is God’s affirmation that creation matters, that love and justice matter, that humanity, in all of its ambiguity and complexity, is still fearfully and wonderfully God-made. We are evidence of Christ’s continuing in-breaking, of the resurrection which was and is and is to come. 4 May it be so. Amen.

 David Colby is  pastor of Central Presbyterian Church in St. Paul.  This  sermon was given on April 26, 2009.  The Bible text for the sermon was from Luke 24:36b-48. The sermon has been edited for content.

1 Molly Worthen, “Who Would Jesus Smack Down,” The New York Times Magazine 6 January, 2009. 2 Garry Wills, What Paul Meant (New York: Viking, 2006) 21. 3 L. Gregory Jones, “Faith Matters: Investing in Sudan” in Christian Century 21 April, 2009, 35. 4 Cynthia Gano Lindner, “Preaching the Word: Reflections on the Lectionary” in Christian Century 21 April, 2009, 20.

Tags: Blog, Congregations, sermons

Category: Congregations