May I speak in the name of the Risen Christ. Amen.
Who does the church belong to?
I interviewed Daniel Webster over the weekend, the Canon for mission in the diocese of Maryland.
He spends time working with congregations trying to help them become healthy,
Healthy enough that they can begin to share their spiritual narratives with each other,
So that they can start to DREAM:
Do Real Evangelism Almost Mindlessly.
He says he sees a troubling split between two different ideas about why the church does the work of evangelism:
His own is DREAM.
What he sees far more often is the dedicated few trying to play the GODsquad:
GODsquad: the Grow or Die squad.
The DREAM team doesn't have to work to share their faith.
It flows from who they are: out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
The GODsquad is filled with doubt.
How will we survive? What will become of us if we do not grow? How can we pay our bills?
Thomas was a disciple filled, so the story usually goes, with doubt.
Unless I see him,
Unless I touch him,
Unless I put my fingers in his side and his hands,
I will not believe.
I cannot believe.
Thomas takes a lot of flak every year come Eastertide for his doubts.
But what's interesting to me about Thomas's so-called "doubt" isn't the resurrection.
It's what Thomas has to teach us about community, about equality, about evangelism.
First of all, can you really blame Thomas?
His friends were talking about resurrection.
From the dead.
You know, like, when people die.
Get buried.
They don’t usually come back.
It’s not that Thomas doesn’t have faith.
Thomas, perhaps more clearly than any other disciple, knows what resurrection would mean.
The women who encounter the empty tomb rush away, terrified.
Mary Magdalene thinks the risen Christ is just the gardener.
The disciples
even after Jesus breaks in on their closed and locked room,
And appears to them in the flesh,
And they themselves touch his wounds
They are shaken, and fearful.
Their whole world came apart when Jesus was crucified.
Reality itself came apart when Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them.
After the crucifixion, the followers of Jesus went underground, afraid that they would meet the same fate as their beloved.
After the resurrection, the followers of Jesus stayed underground
Afraid they would meet the same fate as their beloved.
Thomas is the one, the first one, to immediately proclaim what resurrection means:
My Lord and My God!
Thomas’s faith in Jesus was deep, powerful, unwavering.
But he had to know it was Jesus.
Thomas is the first disciple, after the resurrection, to make the intellectual shift from social movement to theology, from Messiah to “My Lord and My God!”
In a way – with apologies to St. Peter – Thomas might be the true head fo the church.
He understands what resurrection means.
He understands it first.
He understands it most clearly.
Thomas might have doubted for a moment.
But the result of his doubt is the most profound faith,.
The most sublime theology,
The most mindless evangelism.
His confession is ripped from his mouth by his unique experience of Jesus.
This is the last act of the disciples in John’s gospel,
Because now the story must shift to the book of Acts, the story of the church.
This shift does not happen without Thomas,
Who brought the disciples out of their cave,
Their hushed and fearful locked-inner rooms,
The true knowledge of what Jesus’ resurrection really means.
And prepared them for the DREAM space of evangelism.
Canon Daniel Webster describes the difference between DREAMteam and GODsquad this way:
When he was the rector of a tiny, struggling church in the Diocese of New York he had a secretary.
The secretary came in one day and said she'd been asked why she spent so much time at church.
Her answer was that she was the secretary and the treasurer,
And the church’s bills had to get paid.
What a loss, he says, of an evangelism opportunity.
Why didn’t she talk about the eighteen twelve-step programs that met there,
The food ministry they have making sandwiches for the homeless,
The fact that this church staying open saves lives.
We saved lives, at that church.
Shouldn’t that be what we answer when anyone asks us anything about it?
We. Save. Lives.
Who does the church belong to?
I said a minute ago that Thomas is perhaps the true head of the church,
It’s first post-resurrection theologian.
In our first Sunday after Easter, our celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
Does the church belong to the ones who know what resurrection means?
Does the church belong to us?
If today’s reading from Acts doesn’t scare you out of wanting to own the church, just wait a couple of weeks.
No one claimed private ownership of their possessions.
Everyone shared everything in common.
So Luke would have us believe, there was no poverty within the early church.
Poverty wasn’t even a category they thought of, because they were not concerned with possessions, with wealth.
They were not concerned with ownership.
They were concerned with fellowship.
Is it too much to suggest that they were guided by Thomas’ leadership?
That the one who insisted on a radical equality of experience –
I want to touch his wounds also –
Also insisted on a radical equality of possession, of wealth, of fellowship?
The question “Who does the church belong to?”
Is closely related to the question “Who would miss the church if it were gone?”
Certainly we would.
But our circle of fellowship has to extend to everyone who comes through these doors –
Not just the people who come here on Sunday morning –
We need to answer the questions “Why are we still open? and “Why are we here”
With the reality that Family and Children’s Agency needs us,
That the 12 step programs that meet here save lives,
We need to fully become a DREAM team and not a GOD squad –
We need to participate in God’s mission rather than the church’s mission, to borrow a phrase from Bishop Douglas –
Maybe then we will understand, like Thomas, the incredible evangelistic force of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Maybe then we will know that the Church belongs to everyone,
To all of us,
But really most of all to the one who would miss it the most if it were gone:
Our bridegroom, Jesus Christ
We are here to share in God’s fellowship,
The fellowship which 1 John tells us has been from the beginning and is now is the same that always will be,
The love that Jesus Christ shares with his Father in heaven through the power of the Holy Spirit,
The love that is God that is very life itself,
The risen life that insists on radical equality of fellowship with everyone we meet,
With everyone who comes through these doors.
As we approach this table, unworthy even to gather up its crumbs,
May God make us worthy to know the risen Jesus as our Lord and our God,
And to go forth in the power of the Spirit witness to how we, like Thomas, have been changed.
Amen.
I think you are right, even if Peter was given leadership, Thomas immediately knew what the resurrection would mean.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a parish admin/receptionist/secretary, this was the job description I put on things: "Day-to-day things, Administration, pay bills, some liturgical stuff, replenishing paper towels, greeting visitors as though they were Christ." These were definitely in order of ascending importance, and saving lives could indeed be added.
Thank you.