Rev. Paul Tellström Irvine United Congregational ChurchEaster 2C “Disturbing Passages” April 15, 2007
Acts 5:27-32 Gospel Reading: John 20:19-31 word count: 1,834
Last week was Easter and the church was full. The lilies filled the chancel steps, the kids were excited, the music filled the hall, the story got told, and Easter happened. And then, there is the Sunday after Easter. Today is sometimes jokingly referred to as “Cannon Sunday” because you could fire a cannon from the chancel and due to post-Easter attendance, chances are no-one would get hurt. In fact, it is the Sunday most pastors choose to take off themselves. But, I am here for a few good reasons. First, I want to be (which is always the best reason) but additionally, I am here because of the lectionary reading for today. There are two things that jump right out. Fear of the Jews. Thomas’ unbelief in the presence of the resurrected Christ. These need some real, honest examination. One way of dealing with this passage and others like it is not to. A lot of churches do that. “Let’s stick to the passages that fill us with hope and meaning,” or, “Let’s find the texts that match how we understand faith”. And I understand that—but then it leaves us with parts of our story that get stuck away in the attic; we are surprised when they suddenly show up screaming and we don’t know how to explain them. Another way of dealing with them is to gloss over them; to talk loudly about the dominant theme in a passage and how it relates to us, and hope no-one heard the offending phrase. But sooner or later, like Grace Poole in Mr. Rochester’s attic, the words we don’t talk about fan into flames in our subconscious minds. As someone who has been hit over the head with the Bible more than a few times in my life, I have a fascination with knowing what the historical and social connotations are with regard to a scripture in question. Once I understand that, I can place some context around it, and it usually loses the power others have given it to be used as a weapon against me. Unfortunately, today the Bible is still used more as a weapon of law rather than as a signpost of grace. This is why I think it is crucial for people like us to become more biblically literate, not only to find a framework in which we can understand what brought us to this place, but also so that we can refute the untruths and bad religion that gets thrown at us. We shouldn’t whitewash the stuff we are uncomfortable with, because it makes us incapable of holding an educated conversation with those who misuse our tradition. Case in point. Two nights ago on Anderson Cooper’s “360”, he continued a series on religion that featured a literalist pastor against a UCC pastor of one of our newest and largest congregations. The topic was one of the big three these days, in this case, homosexuality. The literalist argued that the Holy Spirit inspired men to write the scriptures, therefore they must be divinely ordered, and therefore we must know that homosexuals are sinful. The UCC pastor in turn made a pretty speech about inclusion and a place where people could feel safe. What an opportunity was lost to put things into context. In other words, they know that the book of Leviticus forbids homosexual relations. They must also be aware that the same book condemns barbequed ribs and Monday Night Football for it is “toevah”—an abomination—not only to eat pork but merely to touch the skin of a dead pig. Caught picking up sticks on a Saturday? Boom—you’re out. These sins are placed on an equal level with homosexuality. So—the point that could be made is that there is no such thing as a literalist—there are only selective literalists. By abolishing slavery and ordaining women, millions of Protestants have gone far beyond biblical literalism. And today we hear a disturbing passage. It is another reason why we need to know what’s behind the story of the phrase, “For fear of the Jews,” because most persecution against Jews throughout history has been perpetrated not by Muslims, not by secularists, but by Christians. Christians who heard the words such as the one we heard today and Christians who preached them. Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” relies heavily on the most painful and degrading parts of the Passion account in the Gospel of John, including those that point fingers of blame. Jane Carol Redmont, an Episcopal priest in Berkeley, writes: “Conversing this week with colleagues and companions about this difficult Gospel, fresh from Passover, Holy Week and Easter, I correspond with an old friend, Jewish, well traveled and well studied, gifted with vision and heart. He knows from experience the wounds of both homophobia and anti-Semitism. ‘Mel,’ he writes, ‘is just the tip of the iceberg. As a Jew, I always have my luggage packed because we are always between pogroms.’ He means it. And notes that the massacres have been, ‘with few exceptions, incited by the intelligentsia and the ruling class,’ though those people are not necessarily the ones who carry them out. He writes of Chrysostom, the Crusades, Luther, various Czarists, Heidegger. “I squirm as I read his letter. I squirm as a Christian, I squirm as a Jew. In the packed bag—or the passport kept current and at the ready—I recognize my own reflex; I too have Jewish ancestry and sixty years ago, the Nazis would have come for me, baptism or no baptism. In the listing of Christian thinkers and leaders, I want to excise paragraphs, pages, whole books, several authors, entire episodes; I want to turn my back. Not my people, I think. Oh yes, my people.”1 With regard to today’s passage that contains the phrase, “for fear of the Jews,” let me make an awkward analogy to set the scene. Let’s say that we have become the First Church of Irvine. If you are a Christian in Irvine, you come to our church. Let’s also say that a few dozen of us started to become followers of a guy named, “Moe.” Moe was a Christian who made some wild claims about himself and got himself and us into more than one significant squabble at City Hall that was very threatening to the rest of us and to our continued existence. Moe gets himself killed, and just when we think it is over, his followers (who are members of our church) start seeing him in the parking lot, and agree to gather with him in a safe space, “for fear of the Irvinites.” Should they be afraid of our reaction? Sure. We would view them as people who strayed from what we would call rational thinking, placing us in danger with our local government, and causing rifts and pain in our community. Absolutely. Now, say a few hundred years have gone by and the story of the Moe-ites has become a major faith. Who ends up looking bad in the story? Now say a thousand years have gone by. How has that internalized fear turned into prejudice? When a Jew—not one of the family members in this ancient community that is struggling with the story of Jesus as it is being played out, but a Jew of today, with a respectful relationship with Christians, who may be a friend or colleague, even a relative, comes into our congregation and hears the text, what would be the experience? Would it be harder to hear in a church that believed in salvation as being exclusive to Christians, or in a pluralist congregation, yet one that could not satisfactorily interpret the passage? Scholars do not agree in their interpretation of why John’s Gospel, which is very rich in Jewish imagery, seems to indicate a prejudice against “the Jews.” But what they do agree on is that we are dealing here with a family dispute. And, like many family disputes, the original reasons are murky. A new community was forming with all sorts of questions about their identity and their beliefs. The disciples had found followers, and each no doubt told the story a little differently. And, it is probably at this point that one significant part of the family left the synagogue and their identification with it, and thus the offending phrase. But before I leave this, I want to say a word about Thomas. The communities of John and Thomas lived close by and were in conversation. When we hear, “Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came,” it is a reference to how the Thomas community referred to Thomas as the twin of Jesus. When Jesus tells Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe,” it is in opposition to the Thomas community, which did not believe in a physical resurrection, but rather a spiritual one. Mark’s Easter story has an angel who says, “He is risen; he is not here.” Likewise in the Acts of Thomas, when disciples are waiting by Thomas’ tomb, he appears saying, “I am not here.” But his body remained in the grave.2 Doubting Thomas appears in this passage because John wants to refute his doubts about the resurrection, and thus cast doubt on the beliefs of the Christian community that believes not in a physical, but a spiritual resurrection. And this is the story that won out. It was hard on Thomas Christians then—their story would not be discovered until a shepherd boy came across some pots in the desert that contained their gospel, as well as other Christian texts, in 1947. Orthodoxy was established that did not include the stories of Thomas, Peter, James, the Nazoreans and others. I think that this is hard for Thomas Christians today. In fact, if we were ever to entertain changing our name one MORE time, we might be happy as St. Thomas UCC. We might even drop the “saint”. Thomas might be the one in whom we recognize ourselves; questioners anxious to know more, unsatisfied, who want to meet Jesus up close without the flash-powder and extravagant claims, but Christian all the same. But here we are. Dealing with texts that are problematic, but committed to finding what is true in them so that we can act on them, and equally committed to making sure they are not abused by those who misuse them. Our faith was not given to us to divide us from one another, and it certainly doesn’t exist to exclude, demean, or be triumphalist. That would be faith’s opposite. Kurt Vonnegut, who died this week, had this to say in Breakfast of Champions: “We’ve got to be kind. We have to love one another and accept one another.” And finally, as he knew too well, he said, “Until you die, it’s all life.” Amen.
Sermon Resources 1. Jane Carol Redmont, “Fear of the Jews” Lectionary reflections for Easter 2C, April 18, 2004 2. Gregory Riley, PhD, “Resurrection Reconsidered, Thomas and John in Controversy,” Fortress Press-Minneapolis. 1995. pp. 174-5 Scripture for Sunday, April 15, 2007 Easter 2C
John 20:19-31
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But 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.
Acts 5:27-32
When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.” But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”
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