A Whole New World

PROPERS:          SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER 

TEXT:                JOHN 20:19-31

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S, MOBILE, ON SUNDAY, APRIL 27, 2025.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The resurrection of Jesus introduced a whole new reality into the world; we can never see the world the same.     

 

            Let me take you back a few years.  Eighty-six years to be precise.

 

            We go to the silver screen – and one of the two big motion pictures of 1939. One, of course, was Gone With the Wind.  The other one – and the one to which I refer – is The Wizard of Oz.

 

            People still get the heeby-jeebies about the black and white images of Margaret Hamilton taking Dorothy’s dog, Toto, away in a bicycle basket. And many of us had our first encounter with tornadoes in the scene which follows.  Frightening for young viewers – images that stay with us for a lifetime.

 

            But I want to focus on a different scene – immediately after Dorothy’s house, swept up by the tornado, has been transported to Munchkinland.

 

            Dorothy tentatively steps out of her house.  And suddenly her black-and-white world erupts into a world of color.  The flowers, the trees, the munchkins – they are all vividly colorful.  It is the same for the viewer.

 

            We could never see the world the same again.

 

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            The apostle Thomas in today’s gospel is clearly still residing in the tornado-tossed house.  He has not yet opened the door. He is sticking with what he knows.

 

            Thomas gets a bit of a bum rap for his skepticism.  How many of us would not share in those doubts?  Could we really believe that someone who had been crucified – and who was truly dead – had come back… and had been revivified.

 

            Doubting Thomas shared something with us.  He would not know the term nor would he know the names, but he was hamstrung by a post-Enlightenment world view. He believed that the laws of nature – defined by Newton, Einstein and others – always overruled the miraculous.

 

            In short, he was being asked to believe something that the rules of the world he had known precluded.

 

            Then, the door to the house opened.

 

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            John Claypool, the noted Episcopal priest and Baptist preacher, wrote a book called Opening Blind Eyes.He recounted an experience when symbolic scales fell from his eyes and he saw the world anew. He was never the same.

 

            Thomas – enclosed in a locked room for fear of safety – had a similar experience. His world was transformed when the Risen Jesus appeared in that locked room.

 

            Like Dorothy’s experience in The Wizard of Oz, Thomas’s world would never be the same.  Both what he knew to be and his expectations had been shattered into a million pieces.  Like Dorothy, his monochromatic world had been transformed into a palette of brilliant colors.  He was not in Kansas anymore.  Theologians would later call this a new creation.

 

            We are called to join Thomas. We are invited into that same world view.  When we experience losses… when we try and fail… when we stand at the grave of a loved one… when we encounter our human limitations… we are called to be like Thomas. 

 

            We are called to look through a new prism – the eyes of faith – and see God’s work in our midst.  As Jesus says in the Book of Revelation, “Behold, I make all things new.”

 

            Let the scales fall from your eyes. Greet the New World in which you live. 

Signs of the Times

PROPERS:          GOOD FRIDAY 

TEXT:                JOHN 18:1 – 19:42

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S, MOBILE, ON FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2025.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The cross is about self-sacrifice and the tender love of God, and not about the acquisition and exercise of power.  

 

            From my childhood in the Methodist Church, I recall a hymn, “the Old Rugged Cross.” I remember, too, gathering around my great-grandfather’s piano as my aunt would play that hymn… and we would sing.

 

            Those words come back to me today: “On a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame…”

 

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            Yet, today, on a hill near my home stands another symbol.

 

            It is a billboard – two matching billboards, as a matter of fact.  They are promotional signs for a local religious radio station.

 

            I find them heretical.

 

            They depict a cross, emanating bolts of lightning.  The station advertised as Power 88.  A cross emitting lightning.  Think about that.

 

            We just heard the passion gospel read. Nowhere within those chapters is the power of Jesus mentioned. Because it is not there.

 

            The King of Love.  The Prince of Peace. The Word of God.  The Good Shepherd. The Son of God. Emptied of all worldly dignity – he is nailed to a cross.  And there he dies a criminal’s death.

 

            Where is the power in that moment?

 

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            Christianity, from early roots on that lonely hill outside the walls of Jerusalem, has been counter-cultural.  Compared to religious and political systems of his day, Jesus was revolutionary – non-violent with a small R.

 

            Christianity continued on that track, shunning power and influence, for the first three centuries.  Any idea where the word martyr came from?

 

            All that began to change with Emperor Constantine and the embrace of Christianity by the Roman Empire.  Power had become the church’s – and it has been downhill since. Think of the Reformation, religious wars, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust… just to name a few.

 

            What we witness and what we worship today is a God who so loves the world that he allowed himself to be stripped of his humanity so that we would realize twenty-two hundred years later the immensity of his love for this rebellious world.

 

            And it is love that is not manipulative – love that does not thirst for or wield power. I read an article years ago written by a Jesuit scholar.  The name of the article was “God’s love is not utilitarian.” God’s love – as shown by the cross – testifies to his tender love for this world – just like the father looked longingly down the road for the Prodigal Son. He doesn’t expect a return on investment. He just wants us to accept it.

 

            The cross is a symbol of sacrificial love, because that is the nature of God.

 

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            When I say a blessing over a child not receiving communion, I first pronounce the blessing and then I add “Remember that God loves you.”

 

            We cannot hear that enough. It is evidenced in the life and death of Jesus. And he calls us to share that love.

 

            Just ponder this: What difference would it make if you heard those words, God loves you, again and again and again.