AYou Call Yourself a Church!@
Polk City UMC
April 11, 1999
Mark Haverland
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.
This passage is important to me because I can remember distinctly my father discussing how it is that Jesus says to Mary at the tomb, Ado not touch me,@ and then later that same day he walks right up to Thomas and tells him to place his hands on the wounds in his side and hands. AHow come,@ my father wondered, no doubt prodded by some Bible study going on at the church, Adid Jesus say in the morning that he couldn=t be touched, and that very evening welcome it?
I suspect this is the kind of question that typifies my family=s approach to things. We are always alert to the ironic rather than the mythic. I=m aware of this now because I am reading a book by Herbert Anderson, Mighty Stories and Dangerous Rituals. Anderson explains in this book that our stories are divided into two types. The mythic tell us how things out to be. The ironic (he calls them parabolic - from parable) tell us how life really is: full of contradiction, failure, disappointment, and surprise. The story this morning is parabolic or ironic because it tells how the disciples experience the empty tomb and went home in despair and discouragement. A lot of life is like this. AHow were they to live now that Jesus had died and they had no leader?@ The myth they had lived for a few years has evaporated in the failure and grief of an empty tomb.
One time when I was struggling to get my business going, I talked to a potential customer in North Carolina who seemed interested enough in my health information business. But he asked me a question which really took my by surprise. He asked what would happen to the business if I died or became incapacitated. He seemed worried that he might get started on this project and then have it evaporate when word of my death in a car accident reached him. I don=t know if this was an excuse to get rid of me, but it did give me pause. I suspect that, like many of our projects, if I weren=t doing it, it wouldn=t get done. I blustered out an answer that was probably not true about how my partners would keep the business going, but the truth of the matter is that I was it - there were no partners ready to carry on in my absence. Absent me the business would simply go away.
This is true of lots of projects staffed more amply than my one person shop. Jimmy Carter recently wrote me as one of the supporters of his Carter Center in Atlanta to request a contribution to an endowment which he hopes will continue to keep the work of the Center going when he is gone. Many family businesses falter because they have no succession planning. Once Adad@ is gone no one knows how to pick up the reins. Many revolutions peter out when the leader is killed. Indeed, our foreign policy leaders seem convinced that life will be much better if Castro would die in Cuba, Khomeni in Iraq, and Molesovic in Yugoslavia. Our foreign policy in these and other places has always in some way been designed to rid the opposition of their leader, hoping that this would also bring an end to the bad things they are doing.
Children, in spite of their adolescent rebellion and feigned desire to be parentless in front of their friends, illustrate this point very well. We make, or should make, elaborate plans for the safe keeping of our children if we should die. I was keenly interested in the comments of the UM minister in West Des Moines who comforted the children of the couple who died in the murder suicide a week or so ago. What do you say to children when their parents suddenly die? He told how he just held them and let them cry and assured them that they would be cared for. AAssured them that they would be cared for.@ It hit me as I read those words that a great and realistic fear of children is who will take care of them if their parents die. It happens all too often. Apparently the family that went down in that small plane in Colorado have a teenage daughter still in Perry. What will happen to her, I wonder. Faith and I have made elaborate plans in our will and through consultation with relatives for this eventuality. We have bought life insurance to protect Kate financially. She will be protected as well as we are able, but of course, she, most of the time, prefers that we hang around ourselves to see to these things in person. Even our trip to Nashville this week, though she is in the able care of Tricia, still makes her anxious to be without her, dare I say(?), leaders.
I walked into Borders Book Store the other day to get a CD of The Messiah. AI=m looking for AThe Messiah,@ I asked the clerk. AOh, he just left. Lots of people are looking for him,@ the clerk dead panned. Well, it was no joke when the disciples lost their leader and began to wonder how to go on now that Jesus is dead. An empty tomb is not very encouraging. Only the one disciple reached the conclusion that the empty tomb means victory. The rest, unconvinced apparently by Mary=s account of meeting Jesus at the tomb, lock themselves up in fear, disarray and confusion. Now what? The followers of Jesus have known him only in one way, in the flesh. Now they struggle to know what it means to follow him in the resurrection. The goal of our gospel reading this morning is to make the adjustment necessary to see and know Jesus in the resurrected Christ.
This is not a struggle confined to those huddled into a locked room on the first day of the week following the death of Jesus. The disciples had learned just that morning of the empty tomb so it is no surprise that they have not yet caught on. But churches throughout the centuries have struggled with the very same challenge: AWhat do we do to catch the spirit of Jesus released from the tomb?@
We here at PCUMC are struggling to create a church as vital and a worship as inspiring as any church with many more resources. Can we find the living Jesus in a church which has no pipe organ, no large choir to lead us in worship, no stained glass windows to inspire us, no outreach program to engage us, tiny though wonderfully staffed Christian Ed classes to instruct us and so forth?
Someone told me the other day that Robert Schuller of the Crustal Cathedral said that the most important attribute of a church was an accessible, large, fully available parking lot. Well, we don=t even have that. Granted, good parking is great, but it is not sufficient. What else would you need to have a church?
Today=s gospel gives us a picture of a church that had no pipe organ, or even an old upright piano - not to mention a Klavinova. No choir. Not even a pastor. In fact, it=s a picture of the church at its worst, the first miserable little conglomeration ever to take upon itself the name Achurch.@
It=s the disciples of Jesus gathered after his resurrection. Look at them! For long, painstaking chapters in John=s Gospel, Jesus has been preparing his disciples for his departure. He has gone over and over his commandments to love one another, to be bold, to trust him, to be ready to follow him at all costs.
Somebody wasn=t paying attention. Look at them, cowering like frightened rabbits behind closed, bolted doors.
They were to be the one walking confidently out into the world, full of the holy Spirit, announcing the Easter triumph of God. Look at them hunched down, cowering, hoping that nobody in town will know that they=re there. Here is the church at it worst C scarred, disheartened, and defensive.@[i]
AWhat kind of advertisement might this church put in the Saturday papers to attract members? AThe friendly church where all are welcome? Hardly. Locked doors are not a sign of hospitality. AThe church with a warm heart and a bold mission?@ Forget it. This is the church of sweaty palms and shaky knees.[ii]
Could this even be called a church? Not only is there no sanctuary, no pulpit, no choir, no parking lot. More significantly it has no plan, no mission, no conviction, no nothing.
When we asked ourselves last fall what we wanted and valued in a church, we said things like Afriendliness; bold, interesting preaching; spirit filled worship; enthusiastic outreach.@ Or as our motto says, Reaching Out, Growing and Serving in Christ! We certainly did not have in mind locked doors, frightened members, fear.
Here is a church with absolutely nothing going for it except... except that, when it gathered, the risen Christ pushed through the locked door, threw back the bolt, and stood among them. Jesus appeared even to the most pitiful church imaginable.
Maybe that=s every church. Even First Assembly in Des Moines that the confirmation class visited on Palm Sunday with its orchestra, huge choir, electronic visual effects, or Plymouth Congregational UCC with its world class pipe organ, virtuoso music and organist, dedicated outreach and spiritual development ministries, not to mention our little congregation with its committed straggle of well-intentioned but over-whelmed volunteers and part time minister C left to our own devices, all of us are nothing, nothing more than a huddle of confused, timid, cowering failures to follow Jesus.
But sometimes, by the grace of a living God, the Holy Spirit slips through our closed doors, our meager worship service, and actual worship takes place, worship not of our own creation but worship as a gift. Sometimes Jesus walks through the walls and allows us to touch him and receive the assurance that though dead, he is not gone; though he is no longer physically present, we are not leaderless; though the tomb is empty, the savior is alive.
The truth is that it was to a church which was hardly a church at all, just a pitiful huddle of timid souls hanging on to one another behind locked doors, that the living, risen Christ came saying APeace be with you.@ Into this busy, buzzing void there was a voice, a presence.
You might have thought that Christ would come like the bishop when the church has failed to pay its apportionments, saying, Ashame on you! You call yourselves a church?@ Jesus never comes to shame his followers. He always comes to inspire and encourage, to lift up and empower.
Jesus says to his cowering and cowardly disciples, APeace be with you,@ showing them his pierced hands and feet. He tells them that he is sending them out into the world. Then he breathes on them, giving them the Holy Spirit, bestowing on them the awesome power to forgive sins.
You put these gifts together and they are the church. To the church which had nothing Jesus gives everything: Spirit, Mission, Forgiveness.
We are a church not because of the building, humble or grand; not because of the choir, glorious or absent; not because of the organ, pipe or electronic; not because of the preaching, inspiring or dispirited; not because of our outreach and our various activities, extensive or feeble; not because of our size, large or small. We are the church because to us, even to us, Jesus has come and given us his gifts of Spirit, mission, and forgiveness, commissioning us to give them to the whole world in his name. That=s why we are called the church. May God grant us the wisdom and courage to leave the locked rooms of our lives and bring God=s saving power to ourselves and to all.