Easter 3 sermon

Easter 3 Touch me and see.

Jesus never invites people to make a blind leap of faith. A blind leap of faith is like a leap into a dark abyss with no evidence or guarantee that there is anything out there to catch us or to support us. So writes Soren Kirkegaard the Christian existentialist who attempted to reconcile faith with the claim of philosophers that any thing relating to God is unknown and unknowable.

In Jesus Christ, God has made himself known. In Jesus Christ, God has made and continues to make himself knowable.

In the incarnation at Bethlehem, God not only made himself known, he made himself vulnerable, he made himself knowable. The co eternal Son emptied himself and came to Earth to experience life as we experience life. Through his own experience Jesus came to know how people react to the challenges of life and the uncertainties of life.

Jesus knew that his followers would not believe he had risen from the dead. He knew they would not only need tangible proof but the Biblical context and personal reassurance that life as they knew it had changed in the most amazing and unexpected way.

The apostles and those others who witnessed the resurrection had no context in which to place the risen Christ. They all knew and knew from experience and without doubt that dead is dead. They all knew that the only way God had worked in the past was through powerful kings like David and wise kings like Solomon. They all knew that the problems confronting Israel required a political and military solution. They knew these things because they had come to believe this is how the world has always been and would always be.

Jesus was asking them to believe in a new way of living. Jesus was asking them to accept a new context for their human experience. It wasn’t easy.

Curiously enough, John was the one apostle who did believe apart from the physical presence and spiritual teaching Jesus provided. And, John was the only apostle who remained loyal to Jesus to the end. John followed Jesus along the way of sorrows. John comforted holy mother Mary. And with Mary, John stood at the foot of the cross and watched Jesus die in physical agony and spiritual desolation as Jesus embraced human separation from God.

The others had run away. They hid in fear and glimpsed the crucifixion from afar. They had already given up on Jesus. They had already decided it was all a wonderful but impossible dream.

John did not think in these terms. With holy mother Mary, John only saw Jesus, his friend. John only saw Jesus whom three times God the Father had audibly declared in John’s hearing: this is my Son, the Beloved.

It was love that brought John and Mary to the foot of the cross. It was love that brought John running to the empty tomb that first Easter morning. And it was that love, that new context of experiencing the world, that allowed John to believe where all others still doubted.

Jesus had much work to do with the other apostles. His resurrected presence frightened them for they still lived from the place of fear. His resurrected presence bewildered them for they still lived from the place of self will. His resurrected presence challenged their way of experiencing the world for they still lived from the place of pride.

It took most of the apostles almost two months to accept the new reality that stood before them, spoke to them, ate with them, taught them and embraced them with his strong arms of love and compassion.

It was important that the apostles make the transition from fear to love so that they might have faith. Jesus was asking them to do a new thing. Jesus was asking them to bring a new message into the world. Jesus was asking them to wake up from the dream of power and command and control that governs human life and to embrace steadfast holy love.

Jesus never asked the apostles to establish a new religion, or a philosophy, or a spiritual discipline. Those things would come later and would exist to support what was truly essential. Jesus invited the apostles into a new relationship with God, the creation and other people. And through the apostles, Jesus invited all people, Jesus invites us, into that new relationship.
It is the new relationship that creates the new reality. It is the new reality that makes faith possible. It is the reality that John and Mary experienced at the foot of the cross. It is the reality that God is real, God is personal, God is love, God is Jesus Christ.

This new reality is not a secret, although it can be difficult for people to discern. This new reality is not just for the enlightened few, although most people hide from it. This new reality is the personal presence of Jesus Christ reaching out to us with divine love and compassion.

For the leadership of that first generation of Christians, Jesus took the time personally to be with them and to teach them the new context in which they could transform their fear into love.
For all subsequent generations of Christians, Jesus reaches out to us in a myriad of ways. Some of us first hear his voice in the Bible. For some of us, it is the touch of the chalice and the first sip of sacramental wine. For some, it is in the invitation of a stranger or a friend to receive a gift so different than anything we experience in this life that we react with fear and describe the invitation as a blind leap in the dark.

What we all need to remember, is that even the apostles who saw the resurrected Jesus had trouble believing the evidence of their own senses. For the apostles, seeing was not believing. It was their belief in separation, fear, self will and pride that kept them from believing the evidence of their senses.

Faith is not a blind leap in the dark. The blind leap is a leap of fear. Faith is the embrace of the Beloved, the co eternal Son of God. Love transforms the eyes so they may see and the ears so they may hear and the soul so it may believe. John and Mary knew this love on Good Friday. It prepared them to accept the new reality of Easter morning. It prepared them for faith.

Jesus invited his apostles, touch me and see. He invites us in the same words in a very real and personal and unique way that is designed for each of us specifically. It is the touch of a new life and a new way of living. It is the touch of Divine Love and compassion that releases us from the blindness of false belief into the sight of transforming faith.