A Way that Transforms

Easter, in the minds of most people, is celebrated as a single day of joy and celebration.  Springtime is here and new life is emerging all around us.  Following a long, dark winter it is time for a celebration.  I think that many people fail to realize that Easter is an entire season.  It lasts for 50 days, from the Day of Resurrection on Easter Sunday morning until the Feast of Pentecost when the Church commemorates the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Each Sunday during these seven weeks is a Sunday of Easter.

Our scripture readings this morning reflect a time of amazement and disbelief about the Easter resurrection.  After all, when something so fantastic and unimaginable happens it is natural to question and be skeptical about what we are told.  The passages from the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation are about this skepticism and the enduring power of God.  They are about the power of death and how the gifts of healing and forgiveness defy death and show us an alternative view of life.

In the Gospel of John we heard, “Jesus said to Thomas, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’”

Thomas, known as the Twin, just could not believe what he was told.  The other disciples who had seen Jesus said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”  How amazing is that?  Jesus who had been killed by execution on a cross, came and stood among his disciples and said to them, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Thomas was expected to believe what his friends told him.  But he was skeptical and replied, “Unless I see for myself, I will not believe.”  So, when the disciples gathered a week later and Jesus appeared among them, Thomas, upon seeing his hands and his side, he exclaimed, “my Lord and my God.”  His was an amazing affirmation of faith.  Because of the testimony of the women who saw the empty tomb, and the disciples who recognized the risen Christ in the breaking of the bread, and Thomas who saw Jesus and came to believe, the faith of all Christians who have followed in all the generations since then, have affirmed the testimony of the first believers.

John then tells all of us, who have not seen Jesus after he rose from the grave, that the whole purpose in writing his gospel is to help us “come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing …  have life in his name.”

Then, in the very last book of the Bible, the Book of the Revelation to John, we are told, “’I am Alpha and Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

We should know that at the time of writing the Book of the Revelation there was a considerable amount of hatred and persecution of the early Christians.  The believers who lived in the first few generations following Jesus’ death were often victims of hostility and violence.  Many were persecuted.  John wrote his Revelation to show that even in the midst of all this anxiety and uncertainty, “Jesus Christ is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.”  He says of the Lord, “I am Alpha and Omega,…who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”  From the beginning to the end God reigns over all of human history.  He is the Lord of all.

The Biblical scholar, Walter Brueggemann, has stated, “It is the power of death… that evokes greed and rage and violence toward others. These texts tell an alternative account of the world, where gifts of healing and forgiveness defy death. The church keeps these texts so that we now, in our [present-day] culture of [fear and] despair, may be recruited for a more excellent way. The Easter Lord… invites an Easter people to be about that defiant civil disobedience of new life in a weary, spent world….”

“The fullness of God’s good rule from A to Z (alpha to omega)” is the theme of Revelation.  God’s enduring power to bring new life into our human existence of doubt and ambiguity where there is so much hostility and death is a powerful image.  The old order is being upset and a new order is upon us.  It is a life of forgiveness, transformation, and compassion.  Accordiing to Walter Brueggemann, “Easter is not rumination on an odd miracle.  It is rather the mounting of a new practical way in the world, a way that dazzles and threatens and ultimately transforms.”  May we all live into this transformative reality in celebrating Christ’s resurrection during this Easter season and throughout the rest of our lives.  Amen.