2nd Sunday of Easter

Second Sunday of Easter 2010
As the Father has sent me so I send you.

The disciples did not believe easily.

They demanded proof. After all, resurrection had never happened before, and it has not happened since.

There have been and continue to be many people who claim to be prophets, inspired leaders, enlightened teachers. Only Jesus has risen from the dead.

Of the inner circle of the twelve apostles, Judas had committed suicide before the resurrection and John had believed solely on the evidence of the empty tomb. The rest all needed and demanded proof.

They received the proof as Jesus appeared to them over the nert forty days. Jesus not only appeared to those who would form the collective leadership of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, he also appeared to over five hundred other people. The scriptures give a brutally honest account of those five hundred who personally met the risen Lord Jesus Christ. The scriptures tell us that of those five hundred many believed but some doubted.

Jesus experienced that doubt all of his life before his execution and in the forty days he walked the earth after the resurrection.

In the gospel reading this morning he speaks to Thomas: do not doubt but believe." And then he says: "have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."

The invitation to faith is not an invitation into a religion or a philosophy or a spiritual discipline. It is not a blind leap in the dark. It is an invitation to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The apostles were only partially present to Jesus until the resurrection. They spent so much time listening to his teaching and observing his actions but they continued to see and hear only what they wanted and expected.

Faith is waking up to what is.

Faith is paying attention.

Faith is observing with non attachment and non judgment.

Faith is receiving the greatest gift there is: the gift of an eternal friendship with the co-eternal Son of God.

Faith in Jesus reunites a lost soul to the very source of life.

Faith in Jesus initiates a never ending adventure of personal growth and transformation.
Faith in Jesus is loyalty to a person. It is not submission to a set of laws, teachings, rituals or spiritual disciplines. Those things exist temporarily to help us grow in our relationship with Christ.

The relationship is the reality. The reality is the creative dynamic spontaneous transforming power of eternal love.

Religion can impel a soul into aggression, submission or withdrawal. Only a personal relationship with Jesus Christ can transform the soul into the glory for which God created us.
The glory of God manifests in our world today as we offer our selves and souls and bodies to God in Christ to receive the blessing, live the blessing, and become the blessing to others.

Jesus came to earth to seek out and find lost souls. The profound and terrible insight of the Bible is that lost souls do not wish to be found. Jesus wishes to find them. Lost souls resist God through fear, self will and pride. Lost souls even create a multitude of religions and philosophies to assert a sense of control over the universe. Jesus reminds us that such control is an illusion.
In this apostolic age, the age of the Church, Jesus asks each of us who have entered into a personal relationship with him by grace ( the gift of God) through faith ( the awakening soul immersed in divine love and compassion) to enter into this lost world as he entered it. Jesus entered this world with love and compassion to seek and find and heal the lost.

So it is that Jesus sent his apostles into the world filled with his love and compassion to seek and find and heal the lost.

So it is that Jesus sends us into the world. Through the blessed sacrament of Holy Communion Jesus not only feeds us but immerses our minds, hearts and wills into his divine love and compassion. He blesses us with the fulness of peace so we can be channels of peace. He blesses us with the fulness of joy so we can be channels of joy. He fills us with the living waters of the Holy Spirt so we can help others quench their thirst for meaning and purpose in the waters of baptism.

In our personal relationship with the living Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus continually pours his love, his infinite and eternal love, into our souls so that we might experience the assurance of that great love and live from the depths of that life giving love.

As we cultivate the personal relationship with Jesus Christ at the altar, he fills us with the blessing of new life so we may become the blessing of new life to others.
Jesus told his apostles: as the Father has sent me so I send you.

Jesus us tells each of us the same. It is the meaning and purpose of our new life in Jesus Christ to walk the paths of this world in the light and peace of the Love of God. It is the meaning and purpose of our new life in Jesus Christ to seek, find and heal lost souls with that deep, transforming and abiding love.

Jesus ‘ word to the people of St. Luke’s is: as the Father has sent me into the world to bring salvation to all people, so I send you into the world to bring salvation to all people in the name of the One God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.