2 Easter Sunday Cycle C April 7, 2013
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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.
