April 26, Easter 3, Signs and Wonders #2, The Breaking of the Bread

Acts 2:14a, 36-41, Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17, 1 Peter 1:17-23, Luke 24:13-35

In our second lesson, Saint Peter is writing to the scattered little congregations of Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey. He calls them “exiles”, even though they’re all from-there, and live at home. What makes them exiles is their Christian faith, so they’re not at home anymore within their native culture, as its values and ideals are celebrated with the gods and goddesses.

Although, if they are slaves or wives, they still have to participate in the culture, which the Apostles take into consideration, and so they allow them to “obey their masters and husbands as to the Lord.” (It's a strategy, not a principle.)

Especially for slaves and wives it’s often impossible to get to whatever house it is where the church is breaking bread that week, so eventually the deacons develop the practice of delivering fragments of the broken bread to whomever is forced to stay at home.

Do you feel isolated in your own home? Even exiled? Are you a slave to the internet and your computer? Are you cut off from your relatives and friends? How do you feel about the way we have to do Communion? Does it feel less sacred when you break the bread in your own home? But that is so much closer to the experience of the Christians that St. Peter was writing to. They would have found strange the way we celebrate it in our sanctuary, although it feels more sacred to us and is more welcoming to outsiders.

We are cut off from that, our congregation is scattered, fragmented, and broken apart. So it’s fitting that the breaking of bread is a symbol of the body of Christ, who was broken on the cross. And yet it’s also our sign in which to recognize the presence of the resurrected Jesus, as at Emmaus.

So it’s a wonder that a symbol of his death is the sign of his resurrected presence. Why not expect to recognize him as something like the other gods and goddesses—his superpowers, or his being more handsome than Apollo, his splendid musculature, and to be celebrated in a classic temple. It must have been a challenge for those early Christians to believe in a God whose presence looked so unlike a god, but maybe it was a comfort to them in their own experience of social brokenness and fragmentation.

In our Gospel lesson, St. Luke is specific in his terminology for the breaking of the bread, that Jesus “took, blessed, broke, and gave.” That specific formula of those four verbs appears eleven times in the gospels and St. Paul. 

At the feeding of the 5000, he took the bread, blessed it, broke the bread, and gave it, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (with one small variation).

At the feeding of the 4000, in Matthew and Mark, he took, blessed, broke, and gave.

At the Last Supper, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he took, blessed, broke, and gave.

On Easter evening, at Emmaus, he took, blessed, broke, and gave.

In First Corinthians, St. Paul says that he got it directly from the Lord, that he took, blessed, broke, and gave.

Eleven times. It is not a coincidence, it’s an important pattern, and a sign determined by Our Lord himself.

I was teaching this in seminary once, thirty years ago. The next week one of the students raised her hand and asked to speak. She said, “Dr. Meeter, I just want to tell you that your lecture last week changed my life.” Nice! “Not actually what you taught!” Oh.

She said, “I know why Jesus did that with the bread. Because that’s what he does with all of us. He takes us, and blesses us, and then breaks us, and then gives us. I didn’t understand that but now I do. After he first took me when I got saved, I got very blessed, and it was great. But then things happened and I was broken, and where was my blessing? I thought something was wrong with my faith. But now I see that God broke me in order to give me, which is what he’s doing now. If he hadn’t blessed before he broke me I would have given up, but I guess he had to break me in order to give me.”

The best thing in teaching is to learn from your students, and what she said I recognized as true for my life too. I’ve been blessed and broken, and being broken I’ve been given. How about you? Does it help you to make some sense of your experience? Yeah, we’d all like to be blessed all the time, but it’s God’s way to give us after God has broken us.

And this is true about the Lord Jesus himself. He took our humanity in his incarnation, he blessed it by the way he lived, he broke it on the cross, and he gives himself to us in his Holy Spirit. And every Sunday he gives himself to our community in the breaking of the bread, in which we recognize him.

And we recognize our congregation too. In our own recent experience we can see the pattern of take, bless, break, and give. A year ago, on Palm Sunday, God took us from our exile in the Lower Hall, and God blessed us on Easter in the sanctuary, and for months afterward. And now we’ve been broken by the virus, fragmented and scattered. So I wonder, is God giving us?

God did not send the virus. It is simply nature, or nature out of whack. God did not send it, and yet our Heidelberg Catechism (for a number of reasons) advises us to take our health and sickness as from God’s hand. So we accept our breaking as from the hand of God. Which means that our challenge now is to wonder how God is using this to give us, to give us in greater mission.

So if our being broken is the sign, then our being given is the wonder, and we wonder how God will give us and to whom. Already these last five weeks you’ve been wonderful in giving yourselves. How long can you keep this up?

Yes, we are right to want to return to our sanctuary, not only for its sacred beauty but also because of our mission to our neighborhood, but our next great challenge is to leverage what we’ve gained by being broken into new ways of giving our church in mission beyond ourselves. It is not for me to be a part of this. But already you’ve shown I do not need to be!

How will you know what to do? Just work the signs. The more you work the signs the more you get from them. Look for the signs, don’t look for proof. A proof settles, a sign opens. Be open to wonder and imagination. Recognize the blessing and do not fear the breaking. Don’t fear feeling like exiles. It’s in the signs of a stranger that the Lord Jesus comes to you.

But even as a stranger he does keep coming to you, and in ways that are not apart from you; he always comes in human ways and human actions and relationships. Indeed, it has always been true, from Saint Peter’s day till now, that the very best sign of the resurrection of Jesus, the best sign to the larger world, is the quiet vitality of congregations, of communities of Jesus, whose binding principle is simply to share the love of God.

Copyright © 2020 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.

April 19, Easter 2, Signs and Wonders #1: The Mark of the Nails

Acts 2L14a, 22-32, Psalm 16, 1 Peter 1:3-9, John 20:19-31

For the Easter season my sermon series is called “Signs and Wonders.” The sign we get today is the mark of the nails in Jesus’ hands. This sign leads Thomas to exclaim, “My Lord and my God.” This is the climax of the Gospel of John, that the author has been aiming at from chapter one, verse one.

Right after the climax comes the summation: “These things are written that you may believe.” That’s aimed at you. St. John wants you to believe. But don't think that "belief" is just a given.

Some believing is required by all religions, but only Christianity makes it central. Islam is about submitting, with submitting as a good thing. And Judaism can be practiced without believing in God at all. It is Christianity alone that has creeds beginning with “I believe” and “We believe.”

Can we attribute this to the Gospel of John? The verb for believing is used ten times by St. Matthew, ten times by St. Mark, nine times by St. Luke, but ninety-eight times by St. John. Believing is big in the Gospel of John. And what the Lord Jesus actually says to Thomas is not, “Do not doubt,” but “Do not be unbelieving but believing.”

The issue with Thomas was not doubt, but that he did not want to be a second-hand believer. I mean a second-hand believer like us. First-hand believers are witnesses with their own eyes. Like the other disciples who told Thomas, “We have seen the Lord.” The believing of first-hand believers is not so hard. But we second-hand believers have not seen with our own eyes, and we have to depend on the witness of the first-hand believers, which is more demanding, and takes a leap, and requires our imaginations.

I could say it this way. We second-hand believers have to learn our belief from the Community of Jesus, which Thomas did not want to do. He demanded the privilege of individual truth. This demand for individual truth is thought by some to be noble and even heroic but it isn’t blessed. The blessing comes with getting your truth through the Community of Jesus.

Well, as Thomas is one of the Twelve, with the job of being an eyewitness, he’s granted his demand. Jesus offers it to him freely. But then he doesn’t take it. He does not stick his finger into Jesus’ hands or his hand in Jesus’ side. Rather he says, “My Lord and my God.”

I think Thomas surprised himself. All he’d wanted was the physical proof of a dead man come alive again. But now he leaps past that, with the climax of John’s Gospel. No one has ever called Jesus this before. They’d called him “Son of God,” and “Messiah,” and even “Lord,” but never yet, “Lord and God,” the combination that is the highest title of divinity in the Jewish vocabulary. So then, what signs of God did Thomas see?

None of the normal signs. No fire, no glory, no cloud, no burning bush, no seraphim or cherubim. This was their guy, Jesus of Nazareth, yet not the same. By the marks on his hands he had the body of the one who died, but this person can pass through walls and doors. This person has no boundaries to limit him. His will and his action are the same, his intention is his execution, his desire is what is, and whatever is, is his desire. Like the God of Moses and Isaiah, no less. Does Thomas see all that in front of him, does he see the great “I am”?

I wonder, does Thomas recognize the grace, the grace that judges him without condemning him? Does he see in the marks on his hands the union of grace and truth, the grace that accepts him, in the truth that does not excuse him? The past is not undone when the past is reconciled, the scars are healed but the scars remain, for grace and truth!

Or, was it something else, some other insight that led him to exclaim “My Lord and my God?” We can only wonder at what he saw—we can’t see it directly, we are second-hand believers, but we can wonder and imagine, and even imagine more than Thomas imagined, in the signs that Thomas saw, which is why we are blessed. It was for second-hand believers like us that Jesus appeared to these first-hand believers. It is us whom Jesus wants to believe in him.

What would you look for in someone to see the living God in her? What signs would you be compelled by? If you imagine the mark of the nails, what signs would you see in them? For myself, I’d see the signs of faithfulness, absolute faithfulness, faithfulness unto death, and a faithfulness that is stronger then death. That kind of faithfulness is a work of love, and I would also read love in the mark of the nails, great love, self-giving love, abiding love, and that kind of love and faithfulness I would imagine to be the signs of God.

Did you know that the words “love” and “believe” are descended from the same Old Germanic root? It’s the root-word that means “to esteem, to hold dear, to trust.” You esteem and hold dear and trust when you love, and you esteem and hold dear and trust when you believe.

Well, of course, belief can simply be assent, just saying, “Okay, that’s true.” But belief is also what lovers give each other and parents give their children, when they say, “I believe in you.” In that level of belief is love, and in that kind of love is belief. This is the kind of believing that St. John has in mind in his summation. Relational belief. Self-investment. Not just that you believe that Jesus is somebody special, but that you can say with Thomas, My Lord and my God!

To say it that way is both belief and love. In fact, believing in Jesus is how you love him. That’s why St. Peter can say in his first epistle, “Although you have not seen him, you love him.” Which at first is a little off-putting because you probably don’t feel like you love Jesus. But this love is not a feeling. You can’t love Jesus like you love other people, he is too far away, and as much a stranger as familiar.

How you love him is by your faithfulness to him, and what your faithfulness requires of you. By believing in him is how you love him. That’s the kind of love he wants from you, always in terms of believing, and a belief that’s always expressed by loving.

And that’s why he designed it so that you have to get your belief from the community, instead of with the privilege of individual truth. That’s why you are blessed to be a second-hand believer and why you have to get your signs and wonders from the Community of Jesus, which is the community organized for your love. It’s because your believing has the works of love in it that you are blessed.

Believing as a form of love is why we can be rejoicing even as we suffer various trials. St. Peter wrote to small congregations, at distance from Jesus, who had no social benefits from their belief. He was telling them that their best benefits were for the future of the world, and thus were being kept on hold in trust for them, and that took some believing.

So too for us, especially right now as the world is turning to what we’ve never seen or even imagined. But if our loving each other in this community of Jesus means believing in each other, well, that’s still joyful. Whenever I believe in you it generates joy back to me. And a whole small culture of this is the indescribable joy that St. Peter writes about.

Dearly beloved, I have seen this joy developing among you as you’ve believed in each other these last few weeks. This joy that you have in each other is a sign and the wonder of the love of God that is alive in you.

Copyright © 2020, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.

April 12, Easter, An Opening in the World

Jeremiah 31:1-6, Colossians 3:1-4, Matthew 28:1-10.

This Easter is a gift. And it does not belong to us! “Easter is not church property.” I have said that every year in order to welcome the visitors not from our church and our friends not from our faith. This year it’s still true, and in a new way, because this Easter is not what any church would have chosen.

No organ, no choir, no trumpet, no glory, but quiet, as quiet as the original Easter in Matthew, when the followers of Jesus were alone, or in twos or threes. They had to face a new reality they had not prepared for, and come up with answers they did not know the questions for. The quiet was broken by only an earthquake, and this pandemic has been one long, slow shaking and rattling of everything we’ve always counted on. This Easter is manifestly not church property.

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. So did I. This week I went to see Green-Wood Cemetery, as much for inspiration as for exercise. I made five trips and I varied my routes through it, but I always included the Old First graveyard, in the middle of Green-Wood.

Let me remind you that our old church cemetery was moved there, and our Dutch gravestones are the oldest in Green-Wood. It’s ironic. Our sanctuary may be closed but our graveyard is open; well, our graveyard is a sanctuary too. And it is unique in its design, like no other spot in Green-Wood that I have found.

I enter the Green-Wood gate at Prospect Park West. Here there stretches a wide open field, with the gravestones all in rows. This is the public area, with everyone the same, the general population without definition.

Then I walk up across an open ridge, and it’s breezy, and one grassy area has no gravestones. Are there bodies hidden underneath? I keep walking across the field and then I enter the woods.

This is not like other woods, because there is no undergrowth—because of the graves. There are no straight rows here. Everything twists and turns with the hills and valleys, and the avenues are a labyrinth. In the woods are the family plots, and monuments, and imposing tombs, some built into the hillsides and others like small temples.

I look for names I recognize and I read the inscriptions. The names are for remembrance and the inscriptions for hope, and in between remembrance and hope is silence, their past lives hidden beneath these stones. However important these people may have been before, the only importance they have now is that they are dead.

You know, the early church built no monuments to the apostles, nor even marked their tombs. Not even Jesus’ tomb was regarded with significance. It wasn’t till the Fourth Century that the so-called Holy Sepulcher was fabricated as a place of pilgrimage. It’s also notable that, apart from the death of  Jesus, the New Testament shows no interest in the deaths of its main characters.

I think I know why. Why talk about their deaths when they were already living in the resurrection? They were already raised with Christ, and that larger truth superseded the deaths they still must die. Where they were buried, was with Christ. Where their lives were hidden, was with Christ, in God. I am sure this was believed by many of those whose graves I pass.

In the center of Green-Wood, you turn left onto a path and cross a ridge, and opening below you is a spacious, level glade within the trees. It is the lovely circle of the Cedar Dell, and its rim is a gentle slope that lowers to an entrance. This is our Old First graveyard.

The surprise is that the stones are in a large circle, not in rows. So this is not the public undefined, nor a family plot, this is a congregation, gathered around its center, a community at rest, and yet open to the world around it.

In the center is no monument, but it doesn’t feel empty, with all the gravestones focused in on it. This is our own little Stonehenge. This circle is a communion of saints, its quiet rest is the forgiveness of sins, its hope is in the resurrection of the body, its sanctuary is the Holy Catholic Church, and at the center is the unseen air of the Holy Spirit.

This place is a gift. As a place of the dead it reminds me that I have died with Christ, as a place of remembrance it reminds me that my life is hidden with Christ in God, and as a place of hope it reminds me that already I have been raised with Christ.

One of you told me that you visited this place last week and you found it “fulfilling.” What I heard in your word “fulfilling” was also: satisfying, and encouraging, and inspiring, and that you can see the Kingdom of God. It lifts you up. Me too. I find the place uplifting. It’s wonderful how this piece of ground can “set your mind on things that are above, not things that are on earth,” as St. Paul says.

What St. Paul means by “things that are above” is not celestial space nor a static heaven, but the dynamic government of Our Resurrected Lord, who sits at the right hand of God, and the coming of his Kingdom on earth as it in heaven, both present and future.

This will be the restoration of all things, for which the resurrection of Jesus is the pledge, and already that includes you, even though you still must die, because you have been raised with Christ. Already it includes this earth, and your bodies, even our dead ones, and so this graveyard is quietly prophetic, when it is fulfilling and uplifting.

And it’s instructive. It offers us a message, for how to live our lives in the present and the future, we who need this pandemic to be done. We want to close it off, and get back to life as it was. That’s only natural. But the temptation is to close our future off, to go back to the same closed systems of power and possession, like back to the same destructive economy of endless consumption for material prosperity. We want to defend our way of life and repossess it!

But the resurrection calls us to lives of openness. Not to the undefined openness of the big public field at the entrance, but to the focused openness of this glade within the woods. Just so your open future centers on Our Lord and is defined by the rim of the Kingdom of God, and yet it has no walls and you can see into the woods around you. This sanctuary has no ceiling and heaven starts just above the ground and it’s heaven all the way up. Your choices are both open and defined. You are guided by the definitions of the Kingdom of God and you keep your center on the Lord Jesus.

You know, in St. Matthew’s telling of the story it’s not so much that the tomb is empty as that the tomb is open—the tomb is open to the world. The resurrection of Jesus has made an opening in the world, this world. When you are raised with him, you go through his opening out into this world, in love and hope and empathy into all its closed-off places. And notice that it was as Jesus went into the world that the women met him.

He was the same, but not the same. He was both familiar and a stranger, both their friend and someone they would worship. And if you have died with him and been raised with him, it’s also true of you within the world, that you too are something of an alien friend and familiar stranger. You’re even sometimes a stranger to yourself, and an alien to your instincts and your comfort.

When this unsettles you, take relief in knowing that your life is hidden even from yourself, with Christ, in God. You do not fully belong to yourself, for Christ has made an opening in you and in the closed-off parts of you. This will unnerve you, but (I’m hardly the first one to say it) that that’s how the light gets out of you.

Our church has been forced to open up. We always wanted people to come into our sanctuary, and now we’re going out into your homes. And just as the two Mary’s had to leave the tomb and go back home to meet Jesus on the way, so now we will expect him to keep his promise to meet you at your home in the breaking of the bread. And as the Resurrection has opened up the world, even a simple human action like breaking bread is open to the creative power of the Holy Spirit, and that extends to all the other daily actions that you do.

This sacrament in your apartment will be both strange and familiar, like Jesus, and it might feel awkward, though less so for those of you who live alone, but in your broken bread there is a miracle that is hidden with Christ in God. On this Sunday this sacrament is not church property, and we receive it as a strange and lovely gift.

The supper is for remembrance and for hope. By it we remember him, and in it we hope for the feast of love of which we shall partake when his kingdom has fully come. In between, in the meantime, we are not hidden from each other but alive to each other, one body, a temple, living stones, and we open ourselves to each other in this feast of love.

Copyright © 2020, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.