May 8, 2011

"Remember: I am with you always..."

A sermon preached by Rev. David Handley

at the First Presbyterian Church of Kilgore

May 8, 2011

Eastertide, the seven Sundays beginning with Easter, is given to remembering those "appearance" stories to enliven our imagination of faith. In doing so, we begin to see life differently, see ourselves differently, and see others differently. We find Him in that Stranger we encounter on a journey (Luke 24:13-35). He could be the One who interrupts us in the middle of a discouraging workday (John 21:1-14). He could be a surprise dinner guest (Luke 24:36-43). Or He could be the Mexican gardener who trims your bushes and mows your lawn (John 20:15). Easter Faith for those first disciples was the conviction that Christ was alive and could show up around any corner at any time. How can we adopt that vision as the central dynamic for our own lives?

Today we look at Jesus appearing to those first disciples on the mountain in Galilee where He told them to come. (Matthew 28:10) Some scholars think that this may have been the occasion the Apostle Paul refers to in his letter to the Corinthians, "…then He appeared to more than 500 brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive…" (I Corinthians 15:6) Matthew specifies "the eleven," but there may have been many taggers-along as there often were with the disciples.

The first thing we learn about "developing an Easter Faith" that will change our lives is that THERE IS NOTHING CONVENIENT about it. Galilee was a 70 mile journey North from Jerusalem, where the disciples were at Easter. It took some re-ordering of their plans, a significant effort to get to the place where Jesus said to meet Him. If I had been one of those first disciples, I might have been more likely to say, "Why can’t Jesus just meet us here? We’re already in Jerusalem. While I’m here, before I get all the way back home to Galilee, I have some errands I need to run, some sites I need to see, some people I need to visit. How inconvenient and inefficient is this to go all the way up to Galilee and then come all the way back. If Jesus is risen, and it is all really true, then surely He could fit into the flow of my schedule, could He not? Surely He could appear in the traffic pattern that I have already set?"

Well, how dumb is that?! The first movement toward an Easter Faith is…obedience. Obedience tests how much we want an Easter Faith; how much we want to have a daily, personal sense that Jesus Christ is risen and with us and is directing our lives. And it is never going to be convenient, because an Easter Faith is the experience where we march to the beat of His drum, not ours.

So, where has He said He will meet us? Where is our "Galilee"? The first and obvious place is HOLY SCRIPTURE. Jesus said to the religious folks of His day, "You seek the scriptures to find the key to eternal life; but the scriptures bear witness to me!" We can’t experience an Easter Faith except through the Bible. And not just a knowledge of it we gained a long time ago; but a meditation on the scriptures we may already know, but needing the Holy Spirit to unlock what it means FOR US, FOR TODAY.

You remember those two disillusioned, discouraged disciples from Emmaus who had decided to head home on Easter night. They didn’t believe the rumors of Christ’s resurrection. All they knew was that their hero had been shamefully killed by the Romans, and the one they had thought would be the Savior was now dead as a doornail. A Stranger joined them on the road, whose identity was disguised, and He began talking with them about what? Luke tells us that He began "opening the Scriptures to them" about all the things about Himself.

Listen, you who are trying to live the Christian life without a regular, daily reading of the Bible, are kidding yourselves. Don’t say you don’t have time. I mean, how important is this Easter Faith to you, anyway…to really know Christ and the power of the resurrection for your life?! There is nothing "convenient" about obeying Christ. There is nothing casual about re-ordering our lives so that we can open the windows of our awareness of how He might be coming to us and where He might be leading us. So start with the obvious place: scripture. Go to Galilee "to the mountain where I told you…" (Matthew 28:16). I’ll be waiting there for you.

Now, when we get to "the mountain where He told us to go," we are given the second step in developing an Easter Faith. When we open the scriptures…and I would simply recommend you start with the conclusions of all four Gospels, where Jesus was showing up unexpectedly to His first disciples….then we find the SECOND step to be WORSHIP. I’m not talking now about the Worship we do here in the sanctuary, as important as that is. What I mean is to read the scriptures in a way that treats them as "holy," special. When we open the Bible, we treat it as "holy" when we expect God to be speaking through it; when we give a certain credence to it; when we come to it not as any other piece of literature to be analyzed, but to be fed by.

Psalm 19:7-11 is a good tutor for how to read the Word of God in a way that… "revives the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, enlightens the eyes, endures forever, warns us of hidden faults…" When we read the scripture as just another book of literature; or with a cynical or skeptical mind as our first impulse, the scriptures will remain a closed door to your faith. We have to enter into that reading with a suspended judgment, so that we can truly let these stories hit us, before we then apply the faculties of our intellect to understand at a deeper level. In this way, our reading of God’s Word as "holy" can feed the soul and satisfy the mind.

There are some people we know, and perhaps we are like this ourselves, who engage in conversation as a debate session or rebuttal session instead of a listening and learning experience. We men tend to be notorious in this way in our marriages. There is some truth to the book title, Men Are from Mars… We are warriors, gladiators, and a good competitive game of pick-up basketball only draws us closer…as men. But put that into a marriage, and it is highly annoying, if not majorly alienating. "Honey, I’ve just been feeling that we aren’t communicating with each other." Response: "You shouldn’t feel that way; I really value what you say. Just the other day I was thinking about something you had said." "Really?," she says, "well, why didn’t you tell me?" "Well, I’m telling you now." "Even on date and time things, commitments you make without letting me know." "Oh, honey, you shouldn’t feel that way. I left you a note on the refrigerator yesterday about what my schedule looks like this week." Yada yada yada.

Some people have that same combative approach to reading scripture. Maybe you are one of them. You read it with a reserved skepticism; some even with a cynicism that places you in the position of judging Scripture instead of letting Scripture judge you. You have a clear limitation and bias as to what can or cannot happen, and you see what you read in that narrow frame. Well, when you do that, you won’t see anything that will stir the soul.

This Resurrection account we just read says that when the disciples came to the mountain where Jesus had directed them, "they saw him, and they worshipped him." They also had a clear view of what could and could not happen. Resurrections were not in their world view, even in that pre-scientific age. Nevertheless, they bowed before the mystery of what they thought they were seeing! This is the way to read the Bible: just let it hit you and interact with it as it is speaking to you.

But that’s not all. Giving credence to the Bible so that we can truly listen and try to understand does not mean shelving our brains. "Some doubted." The third step in developing an Easter faith is to engage our minds, and let our doubts draw us forward instead of representing a closed door. Suspending judgment until we really understand and can open up the windows of our imagination does not mean stuffing beneath our subconscious the questions we have. Of course the disciples doubted! Of course we do too. God has created us with a mind, and told us that we are to "love God with all our heart , soul, and MIND." And so we doubt, we engage our mind in the dialog. It has been said that Doubt is "the ants in the pants" of Faith—it keeps us moving, thinking, questioning, and struggling to believe. Think not that Doubt is the enemy of Faith; quite the opposite. Doubt can be like a barbell to a muscle: in exercising Faith in spite of our Doubts, the Faith grows. That is what our Adult Sunday School classes are for. We engage the mind with the scriptures….all in a worshipful, believing context, with a bias toward belief.

Yes, "some doubted." But that doubt did not disqualify those first disciples from being useful to the Lord. That doubt did not paralyze them from action. To all of them Jesus said, "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations…" Some people get stuck in life with what we could call "analysis paralysis." If you don’t take action because something has not been proven to you, you will have a very empty life indeed, and your life will go nowhere. You can spend your life debating this or that; or you can take action on a reasonable gamble. Friends, for my money, life is too short to get stuck in "analysis paralysis." If the resurrection of Christ is true, and I believe that it is, then it is not moderately important. It requires me to re-order my life around it.

So then, may we give ourselves to growing into an Easter Faith. First, by obeying whatever the Holy Spirit is prompting you to do as your next step. Go to your "Galilee" to the mountain He has shown you. There you will find Him. Second, by reading the Bible regularly in a way that expects the risen Christ to speak to you. Thirdly, do not be discouraged by your doubts; just keep reading and praying for more insight, and your doubts will shrink down to manageable size and not represent a closed door for you moving on. And lastly, expect the Lord to show you something specific He is calling you to do. In doing it, no matter what the inconvenience, you will find the great Joy of your life because you will find the Lord’s risen presence helping you and making His presence known to you. Alleluia! Amen.