Acts 2:14a, 22-32; John 20:19-31

A Sermon by the Rev. Elice Higginbotham

For the First Congregational United Church of Christ, Chappaqua, New York

"Christ is risen! Alleluia!"

And the response is: "Alleluia! He is risen indeed!"

Does it seem like a long time ago that we said that: Is that a little harder than it was last week on Easter Sunday morning? Just a little harder? I think so. We believe it, I know. Christ is risen. That is the bottom-line affirmation of our faith. But Easter is a very high moment. It's a great miracle. It symbolizes the essence of God's saving grace, that even death itself is conquered. Easter is a little heady, maybe, don't you think? A level of excitement, of absorption in the presence of God, and in God's power, that can be hard to sustain, day after day, over the long run.

It must have been amazing to experience what those earliest witnesses to the resurrection experienced. "Jesus of Nazareth," (Peter said to his Jewish compatriots in those early days after Jesus' death and resurrection) "a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know - this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.... This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses." It must have been amazing to hear that testimony, and be caught up in that incredible witness to what had happened. I expect most of us, at one time or another, have had a powerful religious experience, a moment of enormous conviction, when everything we have been seems unimportant compared with the amazing "now" of God's reality in that high moment.

But excitement dies down. And perhaps one of the greatest challenges we must rise to as Christians, is to keep on witnessing after the excitement has died down... to keep on experiencing Christ's presence, and sharing that presence with others, over and over again.

I read somewhere - it was in a resource with sermon illustrations for preachers, but I've forgotten now exactly what it was - that J.W. Marriott, the chair of Marriott International - you know, the head of the big hotel chain - once told a story that goes like this: "A man goes in to a fortune teller, who looks into a crystal ball and says, 'You will be poor and unhappy until you are 45 or 50 years old.' 'Then what will happen?' asks the man. The fortune teller replies: 'Then you'll get used to it.'"

Well, we can get used to anything. We can, I suppose, get used to Jesus' resurrection. It can become a constant fact of our lives, and we have to tell it, and talk about it - witness to it - because it's the basic reality of our lives, all there is to tell. We can be high on glory all the time; maybe even start boring people with our eagerness to witness. OR... we can get used to being miserable, like the man in the story. We can just accept our lot. We can learn to live with it. We can learn to live with it so well, that we miss resurrection altogether - we can just get so into assuming that being "poor and unhappy" is our sad lot to be suffered, that we miss the opportunity to be renewed, and grow beyond our unhappiness, and be changed by Jesus' presence. OR... we can get used to being "poor and unhappy" but refuse to let it get us down! We can be renewed, perhaps over and over, in ways we never even expected.

But resurrection, I would say, is something that, by definition, we do not get used to. By its very nature, resurrection, our awareness of Christ's presence when we feel most abandoned, continues to surprise us.

Jesus surprised the disciples plenty by his resurrection. "When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, 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." The doors were locked, and Jesus walked through the walls. He was there. They were mourning their loss, scarcely able to imagine how they were going to cope... and there he was! They were huddled in terror, fearful that they'd be identified with the executed criminal... and there he was, not only coming right through the wall, but saying, "Peace!" He was gone, dead, but there he was! The atmosphere was heavy with uncertainty and anxiety, and there he was proclaiming "Peace!" Jesus overcame every barrier. Locked doors did not keep him out. Fear did not scare him away. Death did not remove him.

Now I have to say that I'm tantalized by this idea of Jesus appearing like that, walking through the wall, so to speak, because I think that way of Jesus' appearing is meant to show us something. Clearly, a normal barrier, the locked door, one intended to keep some people on the inside and others on the outside, and effective at doing so, too, unless you made a lot of effort - did not stop Jesus. Why not? Why is that important? It must be important, because it happens again, right in the next little section of the story, eight days and seven verses later, exactly the same thing, told in almost the same words: "Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them, and said 'Peace be with you.'" That makes me wonder about those walls, those barriers, and their significance to our experiencing Jesus, or our failure to do so.

Jesus walks through the walls to proclaim peace to the disciples. Well, is he a ghost, an incorporeal, spiritual body that can transport itself through bricks? Is he a magician, the world's first and greatest escape artist (except he does it backwards - he doesn't get out, he gets in!)? Frankly, people have been debating about those metaphysical, miraculous things about Jesus for centuries. I think we've sometimes, in our evangelical zeal, tried to prove that Jesus must be related to God because he had the ability to do the supernatural. He could be seen walking around, though his body was killed; he could appear before you by magic, even in a locked room. I'm sorry, but I think that equates Godliness with spookiness. I would venture to say that the search for explanations for the supernatural is a barrier to our experiencing the presence of the Lord.

Let's just take the story at its face value. Jesus was killed; and yet those who knew and loved him experienced the reality of his presence, and could not be drowned in loss and grief. Fear hung heavy in the air, as the powerful of that time and place sought violently to crush any challenge to their power that Jesus and his people might have represented; but Jesus gave peace. Jesus sent weakened, uncertain friends out into a dangerous world, to - extend forgiveness.

Years ago, I remember once seeing a public service television commercial intended to raise consciousness about the needs of persons with disabilities. (I'm sorry I only saw it once, and can't even remember what organization made it, because it was an incredibly clever TV spot, and I've often wished I could get a copy of it.) But, as best I can remember, the point of the commercial was to turn the tables on those of us who think of ourselves as "normal" - not having to live with any disability or handicapping condition, and expect and assume that the world will function in a way that accommodates us - and imagine a world in which we were the handicapped. A "normal" student sets off to school. To start off, he can't open the door by pushing it forward and stepping through; rather the door opens from the middle, and goes up and down like this (demonstrate with hands), and the bottom half goes down flush with the floor, and you don't have to bend forward or pull back, because it's meant for someone to open and get through in a wheelchair. And our "normal" person bumps his face into the top of the door frame as he tries to walk through, because the door is only high enough for someone to go through in a seated position. Why cut a door high enough for someone who's standing, when everyone going through it is sitting in a wheelchair? Everyone points and laughs as the (so to speak) "normal" person has to bend down and sort of half-crawl through the door.

Then he gets into class, and when the teacher asks him to open his textbook and read the lesson aloud, he can't read it. It's written in Braille. The other students (blind, of course; "disabled," of course), snicker and shake their heads at someone who's never learned to read. Our "normal" student then discovers that he can't take notes in class. There are no pencils or papers - there are tape recorders, because it's "normal" in that classroom for students to learn by hearing, not seeing, or to have hands that are not able to hold pencils. The funny marks on paper that our hapless student makes, seem like worthless scribbles. (What is this guy's problem, he writes illegibly and can't read books?!) And then there are the little indignities like having the drinking fountain placed at a height that's convenient for someone in a wheelchair, and our standing student has to stoop or squat to get a drink of water. Well, you get the idea....

The fearful disciples were huddled behind a locked door, longing for the days of normal life with the normal Jesus. How about those great times when the crowds hung eagerly on his every word, when the disciples had been welcomed into homes, and had debated with each other who was going to have what place in the wonderful new world they were all going to be a part of bringing into being in their lifetimes? And here they were, not only mourning those good old days, but fearing that the bad new days might be the death of them at any moment! The normal old life, with the normal old Jesus - when they were the respected, accomplished followers of the then-popular leader - that normal old life was now in the way of their experiencing the Lord. It was a barrier. The disciples were locked in. But Christ's presence was not locked out. He walked through the wall. He overcame the barrier of grief with resurrection. He overcame the barrier of fear with peace. The disciples recognized him, not because of his success and glory, but because of his wounds. I think that's hard for us to take in, in our 20th Century Western society, where success, popularity, attractiveness, is everything. It's hard for us to take in, that renewal and healing might come through suffering, through want and wounding. But the disciples knew that Jesus was for real because they recognized his wounds. He was not afraid to be wounded. By his wounds, he was able to forgive, and to send the disciples out to preach forgiveness.

A few years ago, my husband told a story in one of his post-Easter sermons to our little congregation in Mount Vernon. If you'll forgive my plagiarizing my own husband, I'd like to share it with you. It's about a small town which had the lovely custom of re-enacting the Passion story each year during Holy Week. This was one of those small-scale Oberammergaus, where the whole town got involved. Everybody participated, one way or another, whether by taking roles in the Passion story, or by making costumes or props, or by offering their property as a setting for one or another scene in the story, or by being a member of the crowd, or whatever. Well, one year, a particularly hefty, muscular citizen was selected to play the role of Jesus. And at the time when Jesus was to carry his cross to Calvary, the man playing the role did, indeed, shoulder a heavy cross and laboriously dragged it through the streets, while other townspeople played the crowd, jeering or weeping, depending on who they were representing. It happened that one little guy really got into the jeering role. He waved his arms and yelled "Crucify him, crucify him!" with outrageous enthusiasm, and followed the Jesus character through the streets, tormenting him at every step. In fact, the little man was so aggressive in his hostility and abuse toward Jesus, one wondered what sort of relationship these two guys must have had to each other in real life. Well, after some blocks of this, the little man, in his enthusiasm as a Jesus-baiter, ran up to the Jesus character, and spat in his face! This was too much, even for an actor playing Jesus. The large, muscular actor set aside his cross and stalked over to the tormentor, towering over the smaller man, who stood cowering with fear. The big actor glared down at the little pest and said gruffly, "I'll get back to you, little man, after the resurrection!"

You know, after the resurrection, Jesus gets back to us. And it's not necessarily what we expected! Jesus was not the military avenger that the some Jews had hoped for. Jesus was not the national standard-bearer that many had associated with the offspring of King David. He did not ring in an era of triumph, or moral perfection. But he said "Peace." And he breathed out the Spirit. And he sent his loyal followers out to preach forgiveness. "This Jesus" (Peter says to his Jewish community) "this Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses."

What happens after the resurrection, when Jesus gets back to us? And what gets in the way of hearing the testimony that Christ is present among us? Can it be that the experience of resurrection will not be what we expected?

I came home yesterday afternoon from a three-day sojourn in Phoenix, where I attended a training in Stewardship for the Conferences of our United Church of Christ in the western region of the country. One of the Bible study leaders is an energetic and delightful young woman named Toni, relatively recently ordained, a member of the staff of our Northern California UCC Conference, and a member of a congregation in inner-city San Francisco. She told of an encounter in her own church life when someone walked her through a barrier from familiarity to new appreciation.

Her congregation is one of street people - where it's located in San Francisco makes the street community a natural constituency. And there was one man whose street name was "Wizard," who was a regular attender at church and at its programs. He is a quintessential street person, in the very latest stages of alcoholism - a disease which probably will kill him before long - a homeless man, shabbily dressed, visibly dirty and bug-ridden, and malodorous. But he comes to church regularly, and he usually brings others with him.

But Wizard has been something of a problem even to this congregation, because his extreme dirtiness has been perceived as a possible danger to other members of the congregation who are HIV-infected, and who frequently use the facilities of the church as a place where they infuse themselves with medications, using catheters, needed to control their symptoms. So this young lady one day decided that she needed to sit down and "evangelize" Wizard. She sat as close to him as she could, given his strong smell, and said to him, "You know, Wizard - God loves you." To her surprise, he responded, "I know. You better believe I know God loves me." "You do?!" "Yes, I do, and you know how? I know God loves me, because every time I really need a drink God sends someone who'll buy me one, because God knows that I would die without it."

If you have ever been an addict - you will know that Wizard's statement, at the very latest stages of his disease - represents something of a statement of faith. Toni recognized that. She stopped discouraging Wizard from sitting down in the front row during church instead of keeping him near the back and as close to the vestibule as possible. This is a man who comes to church, brings his friends, and trusts that his fragile life will be saved from day to day. This is not an affirmation of alcoholism, by the way, but an affirmation of faith - there's a difference. But it's an acknowledgement that someone's faith may be expressed in ways we do not expect, and with which it make take us a stretch to identify.