Orange Emergency Triangles on Amish Buggies to Protect Tradition from Progress

2 Easter Sunday  Cycle C      April 7, 2013  

Acts 5:27-32 Psalm 150
Revelation 1:4-8  John 20:19-31

 Lectionary Link

  There is an interesting dilemma in Amish country.  Should the Amish buggies be required to display an orange emergency triangle when they are on public highways?  The modern triangle on the buggy represents a violation of their tradition; one just cannot mix the modern and the Amish way of separating themselves from the world.  On the other hand, the law requires it for the safety of the buggies and so most Amish comply with the law.

  The orange emergency triangle is a sign of irony.  It says, “If you’re going to try to be present in the post-modern world in Amish ways, then you are going to have to bear our mark of protection so our modern vehicles will not hurt you.  We are going to have to protect traditional people from the Modern World.

  If you are not going to move with the time, we are going have to mark you with emergency triangles so that we do not harm you when we interact.

  How often do we see these signs of clash between traditional religion and their cultures of residence?  How many times has this been replayed in the history of the world?  Traditionalists look out because Progress is dangerous to your safety if you try to interact on the highway of Progress.

  We ourselves could be wearing all sorts of these emergency triangles as religious Luddites of all sorts.  My vestments are older in origin than Amish clothes; my alb is but old Roman underwear and yet I am still wearing them today.  Emergency triangle.  The Bible, the language, the hymns, all need protection if we are going to interact with the post-modern world.  But we are not like the Amish, we have not really tried to promote ourselves as being that much separated from the world, even though this magic little time capsule on Sunday mornings does probably need to have an emergency triangle as we try to integrate everything that we do here with what with try to do in our lives outside of church.

  As we read the Doubting Thomas story, do not think of it as an eyewitness report; think of it as a parable of the Gospel writer who is writing at the end of the first century.  This Gospel writer is aware of changes; the writer is aware that there is a new reality of Christian success that they were not totally prepared for.

  Why is it that there are no Shakers around today?  Today we know Shakers as pieces of furniture and as music?  Why no Shakers?  The Shakers were celibates; they did not believe in procreation.  Unfortunately birth is the most successful means of evangelism for all religious groups and so the Shakers died out.

  Could the Jesus movement have gone the way of the Shakers?  Could the Jesus movement go the way of the Amish?  If you limit Christian baptism to the Jordan River, then the Jesus Movement could not have moved very far away.  If the effectiveness of the witness of Jesus depended upon live witnesses to Jesus of Nazareth, how long would the Christian religion last?  And what if the first generation of witnesses died out; what do you do?  You might say, you have to know somebody who actually walked and talked with Jesus.  But what about the second and third generation and what about people who began to be spread throughout the Roman Empire?

  How could the Jesus Movement survive the absence of Jesus and the absence of his eye-witnesses?  That kind of religious limitation needed to have emergency triangle placed on it by a new understanding.  And that is what the parable of Doubting Thomas is about.

  The Gospel of John is a Gospel about word and about how word use diversifies.  In the beginning was the Word and the Word became flesh.  It became flesh in Jesus Christ.  And Jesus spoke words and what did he say about his words?  He said that his words were spirit and that they were life.

  The speaking Jesus assumes that one is physically present with Jesus to hear him speak.  The apostles, disciples, friends and companions of Jesus were those who were with him and heard him speak.  But they soon were dying, dead and gone and how could there be a contact and transmission of this message about Jesus?  There was a crisis; if one did not hear and speak with Jesus but relied upon the message of another who had heard Jesus and spoken with him, then one was that much further removed from Jesus in both time and space and here is the crisis:  Your experience of Christ was inferior to the experience of those first order Christians who walked and talked with Jesus.  So, Shakerism, here we come.  The intensity of the Christ presence would surely dissipate and thin out in each succeeding generation and the movement would run out of Christ-gas and not be able to go on.

  And this is the point of the parable about doubting Thomas.  Thomas was symbolic of every first generation face to face encounter with Jesus.  He is presented as wanting to have proof that his Christ experience was valid.  The church of the Gospel of John was thriving and it was fueled by something other than first generation testimony.  The intensity of the Christ encounter in the Johannine community was great; it was not inferior to the encounter of Thomas-like first generation eye-witness believers in Jesus.

  And the spoken word was now being put into written words and these written words were spirit and they promoted the continuing presence of the risen Christ and this presence was not an inferior presence, in fact, it was an even more blessed experience because it did not rely on mere physical presence.

  The writer of John’s Gospel is putting an emergency triangle on the old limited way of knowing the presence of the risen Christ; get out of the way because writing is here and “these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. “  The Doubting Thomas parable is set up to show this progression; In the beginning was the Word; the word was made flesh in Jesus;  Jesus spoke words and his words were spirit and life.  And these words animated the lives of people.   And these words about Jesus became written words and these written words were spirit and they were able to accompany people knowing a real and valid presence of the risen Christ even if they were not eye-witnesses.

  And that is how the Jesus Movement has survived for two thousand years.  Words can still make the Risen Christ present today.  Words are still Spirit and they are still life and they can constitute and order our lives in such a way that we come into an interior remaking of our word life such that the sublime presence of the risen Christ is known afresh to us within the particular details of our life.

  So the hymns, detail of culture, the albs, the chasubles and all of the details of our piety that are a part of the aesthetic of our worship, they are but current furniture for the real guest, the risen Christ.  Let’s not get hung up on the style; enjoy what prepares our hearts to experience the risen Christ, but if we know the risen Christ, we will not feel threatened by the high speed of our post modern times.  The risen Christ can always be known within the new details of our culture through words which are spirit and life.  Receive these words of spirit and life today.  Amen.