Second Sunday of Easter, Year C
April 28, 2019

O God of life, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

 Our Gospel reading for today is a little like watching a prime-time serial program where the story leaves off at the end of one episode and picks up the next week only several hours later in the story. This passage begins, “being evening on that first day” – narratively, the same day that the women had found the tomb empty, the same day that Mary Magdalene had encountered the risen Lord. The disciples were hiding behind shut doors because they were afraid.

Because of centuries of bad behavior by the Christian Church (with murderous consequences as recently as yesterday), I always have to mention here that the text says that they were afraid of the Jews – but of course, they were the Jews and the people they had to fear were the Romans. It may originally have been that they who were Galileans were afraid of the Judeans. But by the time this Gospel was written, it was two generations after Jesus’ death. It was still extremely dangerous to write anything against the Roman government, and tensions within Judaism between Jesus followers and non-Jesus followers had gotten beyond the breaking point. We can’t translate our way out of the mess. We have to acknowledge it, regret it, and work to repair the breach.

So. The disciples were hiding behind closed doors because they were afraid. The news of – indeed the experience of – the empty tomb had done little to compensate for the trauma of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion or the extent of their shock and grief. In spite of the barred door, in spite of their paralyzing fear, the patient and loving risen Lord made himself known to them repeatedly. The Risen Lord appeared, right in the middle of the mess – not when things were settled down, not when everything was back to “normal” and they’d had time to think or rest or recover from the horrible events surrounding the crucifixion of their beloved Jesus. Right in the middle of the mess is where the Risen Lord appeared and breathed inspiration of God into them.

Jesus didn’t only make himself known. He gave them three directives: The first was “Peace be with you.” (“Peace be with you,” is not just a holy or pious way of saying hello. It is an instruction, an invitation, an encouragement, and ultimately a choice.) The second was, “As the Author of Life has sent me, so I send you.” In other words, get out there. Stop hiding behind locked doors. You have work to do. And the third was when he breathed on them (or inspired them) and said, “Receive a spirit of holiness.” (no definite article here, and no capital letters…) Receive a spirit of holiness. Apparently a spirit of holiness can be received or rejected. Jesus advises receiving inspiration from the Divine whenever possible. Receive – breathe in. Give – breathe out.

And receive a spirit of holiness they did. Indeed, they received so much of a spirit of holiness that they went from being afraid to speak to being unable to keep quiet about the life and witness of Jesus. They were unable to refrain from proclaiming that in Jesus there is resurrection of the dead, there is love stronger than death, even after they were arrested more than once. Several of them became repeat offenders! Peter, who had denied even knowing Jesus in the courtyard of the high priest, became the boldest preacher of the group, taking the high-priestly family on directly, according to the Acts of the Apostles.

In an episode that followed Peter’s first arrest, the rulers, elders and scribes assembled with all in the high-priestly family to interrogate Peter and John. They insisted that Peter tell them by what power or authority he had healed a beggar, lame from birth, at the temple gate. Peter’s response was, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”

The story goes that when the religious authorities saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men, the authorities were amazed and jealous. They warned Peter and John not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus, and then they released them. But it wasn’t long before Peter and the other apostles were back at it, and they were attracting great crowds of people who were sick and tormented by unclean spirits, who were all cured. That’s where today’s reading of Acts picks up. The temple authorities had had it. They arrested the apostles and threw them into prison. But during the night, an angel of the Lord, a messenger sent from God, opened the prison doors, brought them out, and said, “Go, go stand in the temple (not back on the portico, but in the temple) and tell the people the whole message about this life” — this life of following Jesus. In other words, take it up a notch! The custodians of the occupied city had said “stop!” And God’s messenger said, “Go! Hold nothing back!”

The apostles were, of course, arrested again. 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 Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God [Who is Love] rather than any human authority.” What happens next, according to Acts, is that a well-respected Pharisee in the council named Gamliel the Elder convinced the council to let the Jesus’ followers go free, using the reasoning that if their undertaking was indeed from Love, they would not be able to overthrow them and they didn’t want to be found fighting against Love.” Love, as our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says again and again, is not an emotion, but a discipline. (You know, disciple and discipline are from the same word.) Love is a discipline: a decision and a commitment.

The historian, Jaroslav Pelikan wrote this about God (I’m going to substitute the word Love, like I do): “To obey Love rather than human authority, and to protest that human laws of the state and nation cannot contravene the divine law of the sovereign Love, has been the unanimous teaching of both the Old and New Testament, as well as the subsequent history of the church since the earliest centuries. Moses before Pharaoh, Elijah before Ahab and Jezebel, John the Baptist before Herod, [Jesus before Pilate], Paul before the Sanhedrin….[all the way to] Martin Luther King before the power structure of White America – all were expressing this obligation to appeal the abuse of political power by human authorities to the ultimate sovereignty of Love.”[1]

If the message of the first Sunday of Easter is that the grave cannot hold the Good News of God in Jesus, the message of the second Sunday of Easter is that locked doors and prison cells cannot hold the spirit-filled followers of Jesus. The Good News cannot be killed and buried, it cannot be contained or restricted, locked in or locked up. Government authorities and religious authorities cannot repress (for long) the news of Love’s unconditional regard for all people, or the news that to be faithful to Love, we must respect the dignity of all people, or the news that the risen Lord is found in the very people who are on the receiving end of compassion.

Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries rehabilitation for gang members in Los Angeles, writes about how many well-meaning volunteers, long accustomed to providing service, ask him what they’re “supposed to do” at Homeboy and he says that he always responds, “Wrong question. The right one is What will happen to you here?…Don’t set out to change the world. Set out to wonder how people are doing.” He teaches that “we are sent to the margins NOT to make a difference, but so that the folks on the margins will make us different.”[2] I’d say that’s my experience of what mission looks like when it’s going well at Emmanuel Church. The people who are living in various social and economic and religious margins make us different.

It is into this mission, this Christian identity, that we are welcoming Isla Elise Olesen this morning through her baptism. We have a story that we are sharing with her today, that she will be growing into along with her big sister Clara, and her parents and godparents and grandparents. Part of our story is that we are a community of people who have been offered the gift of a spirit of holiness, a Divine Inspiration, and that we want to receive it rather than reject it. Our community has been directed to tell the whole story (the whole story so far, that is) about following Jesus. The whole story includes so much joy, as well as the messes we’ve made, the messes our forebears have made because of fear or resentment, ignorance or indifference. We have been instructed to obey Love over any human authority whenever human authority and Love are in conflict. We support one another in figuring out how to do that. We pray that angels or messengers of the Divine will move through and ultimately open the rooms or prison doors that keep us from standing up for, telling about, and enacting the discipline of Love.

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