This Sunday I got to preach. You'll find the entirety of my sermon below. Lucky for me, the text for this past week was the perfect match for all that I wanted to say to the congregation about our Be The Blessing Day of service coming up in just 3 short weeks. As Thomas longed to see and the Risen Christ for himself, so we all long for our own experience of the Messiah in our lives. As the Father sent Jesus, so we are being sent into the community to be Christ's hands and feet that others might experience God's love for them and come to believe.If you'd like to serve with our congregation in Denver on Sunday, May 22, fill out our online registration form--it only takes 5 minutes. You can also support our Be The Blessing event and find out more about it by visiting our facebook page.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
“Claimed, Gathered, and Sent."
Happy Easter! I know, I know, that is so last week. But as Christians we gather to celebrate Easter every single Sunday. So between that truth and the fact that today is the Second Sunday of Easter, I definitely have the right to do this: Alleluia, Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
When I was a Youth Director in Minnesota I was teaching a confirmation lesson one night, and I wanted to make a point about all that we have in common through our shared faith. I started off by asking the group of junior high kids, hoping for a gimme, “How many of you are Christians?” No response, so I tried again, thinking maybe they hadn’t been listening. “Raise your hand if you are a Christian!” Still, no hands, no response at all, just a bunch of empty stares in my general direction. I started to think we had a pretty big problem on our hands—half way through at least one year of catechetical instruction, some almost through two years, and none of our Confirmands were Christian? I asked one more time, “Come on everybody, raise your hand if you are a Christian.” One girl shouted out, “Jess, we’re Lutherans!”
Needless to say, our regularly scheduled lesson for that evening was put on hold in order to describe exactly what it means to be Christian and how it is that we share in a Lutheran expression of the Christian faith.
As Lutherans in this place, we are also a part of an even more specific group. We are members of a denomination called the ELCA, or the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. As a part of this national church-wide body, are involved in something even bigger than our own congregation. Through the ELCA, along with other Lutheran bodies, we’re blessed to be a part of huge efforts such as Lutheran World Relief, Lutheran Disaster Response, and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services. Many of our young people have been able to experience the Body of Christ in a big way through participation in ELCA National Youth Gatherings.
This might all be news to you. It may also be news to you that the ELCA has a mission statement—a roadmap for a mission which we are all called take on in our communities, congregations, and lives. It’s a baptismal mission. It’s God’s mission. Here it is:
“Marked with the cross of Christ forever, we are claimed, gathered, and sent for the sake of the world.”
Now, what does that have to do with Jesus’ post-Easter appearance to the disciples and Thomas’ experience of doubt turned into belief from our Gospel reading for today?
First of all, as our wider church body’s mission reminds us, we are Claimed by God’s grace for the sake of the world, we are a new creation through God’s living Word by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Christ’s wounds make a claim on Thomas. Before he saw, he couldn’t believe. The witness of others wasn’t enough for him. He hungered for his own experience of Christ, risen and present in relationship with him, not someone else. We can all relate to Thomas. We all have doubt. When we are being authentic, “Triple A” Christians, we are hopefully able to admit this. We have moments or season of doubt, in which we long for the risen Christ to come to us, show us his hands and side and prove to us once and for all that what we’ve believed without seeing is as true as we’ve hoped.
And for Thomas, that’s exactly what happens. He longs to experience Christ risen for him. And his heart’s desire is fulfilled. Jesus meets him in his doubt and gives him solid proof. For Thomas, seeing is believing. He cannot unsee the wounds of Jesus, and he can’t undo the claim they’ve made on his life. Now having seen, Thomas is gripped in the inescapable grasp of God’s self-giving love, the love of the savior who laid down his life for his friends—a grasp which certainly held him long before his profession of belief.
They say that faith is believing in things unseen. But I think faith is also being gripped in the powerful grasp of Christ, whom we have seen, who has come to us, who has shown us his love, who has died and rose again that we might be free from the hold sin and death had on us. And we, even in our moments of doubt, can’t deny that we have seen the Risen Christ, we’ve touched him and been touched, we’ve experienced him in the sacraments of baptism and communion.
As those who are claimed, we are gathered. Our ELCA mission statement affirms that we are Gathered by God’s grace for the sake of the world, we will live among God’s faithful people, hear God’s Word, and share Christ’s supper.
We are not gathered like the disciples when Jesus appears to them, huddled somewhere with the doors locked for fear of some terrible fate. We gather boldly, in the midst of a world that doesn’t always acknowledge the power of hope or the value of forgiveness.
We gather to support one another in faith. In fact, in the toughest of times, when doubt is all that we feel, the community of faith believes for us. How many of us have been gripped by grief or depression or other tough stuff and have found it impossible to sing the song of faith. In these moments, we are lifted up by the faith of the community, who will sing the song of faith for us and pray the prayers our own heart cannot bear to pray. Gathering keeps us in the faith, gathering reminds us that we have been claimed.
But gathering isn’t the end of the story, our mission has one more component. As God’s people claimed and gathered we are finally sent. We are sent by God’s grace for the sake of the world, we will proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, serve all people following the example of our Lord Jesus, and strive for justice and peace in all the world.
Christ speaks these words to his disciples, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
A prayer by Saint Teresa of Avila has something to say about how and why it is that we are sent into the world:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
Our congregation is experiencing a call to be Christ’s body in the world in a very special way. On May 22, we will gather, not in this sanctuary, but out there in the community of Denver. We will gather as people who are sent to serve our neighbor in love. We will be working with over 20 Denver area organizations, who each have their own mission for change in the world, but who all see our vision of God’s kingdom on earth. There are over 50 sites, 50 projects, 50 opportunities for you to serve. If you don’t think there’s a way for you to be involved, then talk to me, and I’ll help you find a way to Be The Blessing. We are waiting and hoping for 100 more people to answer the call; over 600 have already said they will Be The Blessing May 22. If you haven’t responded to this opportunity to live out your faith yet, find our registration table outside of the sanctuary today or register online.
Because someone in Aurora is doubting that the Good News is true. The hands that pound nails into the frame of a Habitat for Humanity house on the street where they live on May 22nd will be Christ’s hands, showing them that the Prince of Peace truly is present.
And a woman in a nursing home is losing hope and finding it hard to believe that she still matters in the eyes of the world and in the heart of God. The feet that step across her doorway to spend a short Sunday visit as a part of the Bessie’s Hope project will be more than a blessing for her, they will be the feet of her Savior, who has appeared to restore her faith.
And there’s a man in downtown Denver who hungers for more than breakfast as he arrives at Denver Rescue Mission at dawn. His spirit will be filled again as he looks Jesus in the eye, the one serving heaping helpings of grace with the scrambled eggs.
And even someone in this sanctuary is struggling to have faith. Out of obligation, or peer pressure, or in one last attempt to experience resurrection they’ll sign up to Be The Blessing, as crazy as it seems. And at the moment they least expect, the hand of one whom they expected to serve will become for them the hand of Christ—wounded and vulnerable, close enough to touch, and real enough to believe.
Jesus is risen and we shall arise. In the meantime, let us be Christ’s hands and feet for those who are still yearning to see and believe.
Christ is risen. Amen.
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