SPEAKER_04: Alright, so for Easter, we're gonna always start with the Greek phrase, and the English translation follows.
SPEAKER_04: So I'll say Christos and Esti, which means hallelujah, Christ is risen.
SPEAKER_04: And your line is Aliphos anesti.
SPEAKER_04: Aliphos an esti, which means the Lord is truly risen or the Lord is risen indeed.
SPEAKER_04: Christos and Esth, hallelujah, Christ is risen.
SPEAKER_04: Alethos and estes, the Lord is risen indeed.
SPEAKER_04: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_04: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_04: Almighty God, you all are served men, all serpents, and from you no secrets are hearts by the inspiration of your Spirit that we may perfectly love you and perfectly magnify your holy name through Christ.
SPEAKER_04: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_04: Almighty and everlasting everlasting God, who in the paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation.
SPEAKER_04: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ's body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith.
SPEAKER_04: Through Jesus Christ our Lord, lives and rains with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, the Reverend.
SPEAKER_04: After being seated, our children greatly five and love are invited to the God in the way.
SPEAKER_03: Then they returned to Jerusalem from a mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day away.
SPEAKER_03: And when they entered the city, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying, Peter and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, son of Atheus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas, son of James, all were persevering in prayer together with women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as the sisters and brothers with the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: A reading from the third Psalm, please respond at the half verse.
SPEAKER_03: Praise the living God.
SPEAKER_03: I will give thanks to the one God with my whole heart.
SPEAKER_03: Great are the works of God.
SPEAKER_03: Splendor and majesty are her work.
SPEAKER_03: She has gained renown for her wonderful deeds.
SPEAKER_03: She provides fresh meat for those who revere her.
SPEAKER_03: She has declared the strength of her works to her people.
SPEAKER_03: The works of her hands are truth and justice.
SPEAKER_03: They stand fast forever and ever.
SPEAKER_03: She sent redemption to her people.
SPEAKER_03: She has ordained her covenant forever.
SPEAKER_03: And all those who do have a good understanding.
SPEAKER_01: But Thomas, one of the twelve, who was called Didymus, the twin, was not with them when Jesus came.
SPEAKER_01: So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: But he said to them, Unless I see the marks of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the marks of the nail and my hand to his side, I will not leave.
SPEAKER_01: And within eight days his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus came through the door, though the doors were shut, and stood among them and said, Peace be with you all.
SPEAKER_01: Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here and look at my hands.
SPEAKER_01: Bring your hand and put it in my side, and do not doubt, rather believe.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas answered him, saying, My Savior and my God.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to him, Was it because you have seen me that you believed?
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.
SPEAKER_01: Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may come to believe Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
SPEAKER_00: This is the gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Good morning, everybody.
SPEAKER_01: Happy Easter.
SPEAKER_01: Happy Easter, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: So we're going to talk about the ending of the Gospel of John today.
SPEAKER_01: Now notice uh I did say ending because even though some of you know your Bible enough to know that there is a chapter 21, I am among the people in the scholarship world who believes that this was actually the original ending of the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Like, and if you read it, that makes sense because he tells you, or she, he actually might probably a woman who actually wrote this, in my opinion, but whoever wrote this gospel, like, tells you we're done.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Like, we record, there were many other things that were recorded, but these, they tell you the purpose.
SPEAKER_01: These were recorded so that you would believe that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, and that in believing you will have life in his name.
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't make sense if then all of a sudden it's like, oh, by the way, there's another whole chapter of stories, right?
SPEAKER_01: So I think this is, and this is sort of the interpretive lens.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is what's great about like really good literature.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, it doesn't always have to be like this, but a lot of really good literature, like the end kind of gives you the interpretive lens about the purpose of writing the narrative or the story.
SPEAKER_01: And so the purpose of this gospel was that we could believe.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what does that mean, that word?
SPEAKER_01: Believe.
SPEAKER_01: Now, some of you have heard this word used in church contexts in a way that Mike and I don't use it.
SPEAKER_01: You think that it has to do with like intellectual assent or agreement.
SPEAKER_01: There are people out there that preach that.
SPEAKER_01: That do you think that this factually happened?
SPEAKER_01: And if you do, then you get a prize.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: It's sort of like a yes or no question.
SPEAKER_01: If you believe that Jesus Christ was God and that he was raised from the dead, yes or no, and if you do, then you get the prize of going to heaven at some point.
SPEAKER_01: This transactional way of understanding belief that it's sort of intellectual agreement or assent that certain events happened.
SPEAKER_01: But friends, that's actually not what the word means.
SPEAKER_01: At least historically, or throughout culture and languages, at least in the context of this gospel, the word believe has to do with like your heart or your being.
SPEAKER_01: So like in Greek it actually could be translated as faith.
SPEAKER_01: In English, believe, in Latin, credo, where we get our word creed.
SPEAKER_01: And it has to do with like putting towards like love is the root of it, right, in the English, in the belief.
SPEAKER_01: It comes from like putting like your yourself, your existence inside of something, your love inside of something.
SPEAKER_01: In credo, it's like giving your heart over to a reality.
SPEAKER_01: So, in some ways, like a better word for believe is trust.
SPEAKER_01: The way that I'm gonna say is that trusting, right?
SPEAKER_01: Entrusting your life to a reality that you are trying to understand.
SPEAKER_01: It's trusting your life to a reality.
SPEAKER_01: And friends, we do this all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Like we need to believe.
SPEAKER_01: Like human beings, our brains, our lives, we like entrust ourselves to realities all of the time.
SPEAKER_01: Am I the only one here that drives a car?
SPEAKER_01: When you get into that missile, like that missile that we take up to 90 miles an hour, you are believing, you are entrusting your reality, your life, that everybody else is gonna follow the rules.
SPEAKER_01: How ludicrous this is?
SPEAKER_01: Because we drive around assuming everybody else is gonna play by the same rules.
SPEAKER_01: You are living inside that reality.
SPEAKER_01: And this is how like science works.
SPEAKER_01: I love people who are like, oh, I don't believe in religion, I believe in science.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, you think we don't?
SPEAKER_01: Here, let me show you how much I believe in science.
SPEAKER_01: I just believed and entrusted myself to the reality that a wormhole wasn't gonna open up and I was gonna go through a portal to another dimension.
SPEAKER_01: I believe in the repeated reality of the way matter is moving.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone fly an airplane?
SPEAKER_01: Do you believe in physics or have you been in an airplane?
SPEAKER_01: Of course you believe in science.
SPEAKER_01: You're entrusting your life to a reality and a narrative.
SPEAKER_01: This is how our brains work.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the thing is, it's we've got to answer all kinds of questions around what do we trust and believe.
SPEAKER_01: For instance, do you believe, or do you entrust yourself to the reality that people are good?
SPEAKER_01: That's a trust, that's a tough one, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: I don't always do that, do you?
SPEAKER_01: That they're made in the image of God?
SPEAKER_01: Do you entrust yourself to the reality that welcoming in the stranger, or forgiveness, or generosity, shivering, forgiving, all of the things that we talk about on Sunday morning when you come here, we're inviting you to entrust a reality that doesn't always feel intuitive.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, many times it feels really counterintuitive to pray for my enemies?
SPEAKER_01: To assume that everybody is made in the image of God and treat them with that dignity, even though they do horrible things to me and other people?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we are being asked to entrust ourselves to a reality that is no ways intuitive.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I go out there in the world and I am being bombarded with messages that tell me don't trust anybody.
SPEAKER_01: You can't trust video, you can't trust social media, you don't know what is real anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Don't trust anything.
SPEAKER_01: Just be scared, basically, all of the time.
SPEAKER_01: And grab as much power and money and influence to protect yourself and the people that you love.
SPEAKER_01: Because you can't trust anything.
SPEAKER_01: That's what it feels like for me when I go out there.
SPEAKER_01: Am I the only one that has a hard time trusting what is real?
SPEAKER_01: And so I think part of what we're doing is we're coming here together to try to believe, to entrust ourselves to a different story.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna say that like this reality of resurrection that we're in right now, this post-Eas this Easter season, when we make a claim about the foundation of the universe, about God, about the reality underneath all things, is probably the most important interpretive key to the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, at least I think St.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says that in his letters to the Corinthians, when he talks about the resurrection being critical.
SPEAKER_01: Like, we get this right, we entrust ourselves to this, it empowers us to do other things.
SPEAKER_01: So, what's the the thing that like the gospel is asking us to trust our life with?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, I think after having walked a really beautiful holy week, is that on some level that the pain, the hurt, the brokenness, the sin, the violence, the scarcity, all of the horrible realities that we experience in our life and in the world that feels like it's completely unredemptive, that there's nothing beautiful there, and there's nothing that God or anybody can do about it, that God can take that in a way that we don't understand and breathe life into it and make something that's a big ask to believe that.
SPEAKER_01: But I think that's I think that's why we're here.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's why we we we come back, because I think if if if we can get that, right, if we can look at the world and trust that, it changes, it transforms us.
SPEAKER_01: It transforms us.
SPEAKER_01: So, how does that happen, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like, how do we how do we look at these places?
SPEAKER_01: I looking at the there's some things about this that I think are really interesting about the way this gospel ends regarding this trusting the reality of resurrection and a God of resurrection, a God who makes things new.
SPEAKER_01: I think the first, which is interesting, is that we always have to remember that it's relational.
SPEAKER_01: Like the reality of God is.
SPEAKER_01: Is relational.
SPEAKER_01: We believe in the incarnation.
SPEAKER_01: We believe in relationship that God inherently is that.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we mean by Trinity.
SPEAKER_01: And that somehow for us to experience that more fully, the reality of resurrection, I think the invitation is to like invite ourselves into that relationship.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, think about this.
SPEAKER_01: I said it earlier, Mike and I have been friends for like eight, ten years.
SPEAKER_01: But over the last year, we've gotten a whole lot closer.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Why do you think that is?
SPEAKER_01: It's not your question.
SPEAKER_01: D I M E, I.
SPEAKER_01: Relationship, relationship means connection.
SPEAKER_01: But the reality is that to grow in depth of relationship, people have to spend time together.
SPEAKER_01: The God of relationship is saying, like, time.
SPEAKER_01: You're invited into a reality of spending time together, whatever that means.
SPEAKER_01: We have lots of ways that people have talked about what that means for them.
SPEAKER_01: But the reality is, is that to experience the reality of resurrection, it requires spending time with God.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever that looks like.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're here, I'm preaching to the crowd, right?
SPEAKER_01: Literally preaching to the crowd.
SPEAKER_01: But what does it mean to believe in a God of relationship that is interested in spending time with us?
SPEAKER_01: And not only that, but like, in some ways it's it's even more, it's like a God that is interested in breaking into the fears of our life.
SPEAKER_01: And I love this at the point.
SPEAKER_01: This is a big trust statement, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is the night that Mary experiences the tomb, the gardener, the risen Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So that evening is what it says.
SPEAKER_01: And the disciples are locked away in fear and failure and uncertainty, right?
SPEAKER_01: And shame prominently, uncertain about what was going to happen.
SPEAKER_01: They were completely, utterly locked away in the fear of their life.
SPEAKER_01: The fear of suffering.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, I have to believe, I'm getting to the point where I believe that all fear on some level is related to suffering and our fear of pain in our lives, the people that we love, which causes us pain.
SPEAKER_01: And so they are just overwhelmed by fear, locked away.
SPEAKER_01: And the story says God breaks into that.
SPEAKER_01: That's really beautiful for me.
SPEAKER_01: Is that I don't have to earn it.
SPEAKER_01: Like we take for granted that God is trying to invite God's self.
SPEAKER_01: God is inviting God's self into the fears.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, this is where you know what you trust.
SPEAKER_01: If you're sitting here right now wondering whether or not you believe, you trust, right, in the reality that Jesus revealed as the face of the living God, go to your fears.
SPEAKER_01: That is where what we trust immediately comes out when we find out what we're most afraid of.
SPEAKER_01: God breaks in to the fearful, broken, failure reality of these disciples and breathes peace upon them.
SPEAKER_01: Gives God's very open.
SPEAKER_01: Like breathe, like came in and gave God's very.
SPEAKER_01: This is our Pentecost.
SPEAKER_01: This is John's Pentecost.
SPEAKER_01: The very breath of God, the resurrected Jesus, gives to us the very breath of God to recreate, to be part of something new.
SPEAKER_01: Taking the worst violence and reality that I've ever read about.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, truly, there may have been a there may be one that's close, right?
SPEAKER_01: But I'm not going to go there.
SPEAKER_01: But but the violence that was put upon the figure of Jesus Christ, the brokenness, the betrayal, the abandonment, the violence, I mean, everything, the worst of humanity put upon, and something was made new out of that.
SPEAKER_01: And so God goes in and breathes God's break.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus breathes God's very own breath.
SPEAKER_01: And then you have Thomas, interesting character who is, you know, not there.
SPEAKER_01: And I call reasonable Thomas, incredibly reasonable Thomas, who this character's namesake, St.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas.
SPEAKER_01: St.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas the Reasonable.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for laughing at that.
SPEAKER_01: So St.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas the Reasonable, he's not there.
SPEAKER_01: Who knows what he's doing?
SPEAKER_01: He comes back and they say, Well, we're locked away in fear.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus showed up embodied, and he breathed his very own breath upon us and said, Shalom, peace be with you.
SPEAKER_01: And then told us to go out into the world, and we haven't moved.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if I was Thomas, I'd be like, Yeah, that happened, didn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's get some food.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Like, let's get some food.
SPEAKER_01: So I understand.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas said, I'm not going to take secondhand.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas, what I love about this part of the story in this reality of resurrection is Thomas says, like, I need you, God, to meet me where I'm at.
SPEAKER_01: I need you to meet me where I'm at.
SPEAKER_01: If you want me to put myself into your story, so Mike said earlier, if you want me to put my life into your life, I literally need to put my fingers in it.
SPEAKER_01: I want to put my entire life inside.
SPEAKER_01: If you want me to believe, if you want me to trust, then I need you to show up.
SPEAKER_01: And God does.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_01: God shows up.
SPEAKER_01: And I love this because it gives us permission to name what we need in relationship with the God that is making all things new.
SPEAKER_01: I need more.
SPEAKER_01: I need to put my hands in it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm losing that trust.
SPEAKER_01: I believe, help my unbelief, is my favorite line in all scripture.
SPEAKER_01: I trust, help my untrust and my distrust.
SPEAKER_01: This is what I need.
SPEAKER_01: And Thomas gets it.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here's the thing.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if we all get it.
SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes we don't, not until we die.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's that's kind of a rub here, friends.
SPEAKER_01: That's the testimony of the witness of people, is that sometimes, despite a life of yearning, we don't feel that.
SPEAKER_01: And that's not a failure on your part.
SPEAKER_01: We say that God is faithful even unto death.
SPEAKER_01: So even at the grave, we sing allelujah, hallelujah, alleluia.
SPEAKER_01: We trust that if you go your whole life not getting the balm that you need for the suffering or the pain, that you're going to get him when you die.
SPEAKER_01: That is as close as I'm going to get, right?
SPEAKER_01: To this reality of bringing things together.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't a reality of you're going off to heaven.
SPEAKER_01: This is that God is faithful.
SPEAKER_01: That the reality of suffering is temporary.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that.
SPEAKER_01: I bet my life on that.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here's the thing that I think we have to see about healing and reconciliation and the things being made new.
SPEAKER_01: Is that I think if we look at the text, a big piece of this is forgiveness.
unknown: A big piece of this is forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's good news for you or bad news for you, but Mike just wrote a really good book on reconciliation and forgiveness, and the process is directly tied to the reality of making things new.
SPEAKER_01: That as resurrection people, that's a part of it.
SPEAKER_01: That's where healing comes.
SPEAKER_01: Forgiving ourselves, for me, primarily forgiving other people that have hurt us.
SPEAKER_01: Being people of reconciliation and healing in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And notice I say healing, friends, I've got to be crystal clear.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking about curing.
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about healing that is related to peace, that is related to hope.
SPEAKER_01: I was a chaplain in a hospital twice, and let me tell you, I have walked into plenty of rooms where people did not experience any curing, but they sure did have healing.
SPEAKER_01: There was no curing, but there sure was healing.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's why we come here on Sundays and we gather.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how people do.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, I'm gonna lead here and I'm gonna do the best that I can to run this operating system in my life, to have faith, to believe, to bet my life on this truth and reality, that the underlying reality of all things is real, and it's relational, and it is seeking healing and reconciliation of all things, and it's not afraid of our failures and our hurts and our pain, or dare I even say, our suffering.
SPEAKER_01: And it's about the work of inviting us into relationship, where we then become part of the engine of healing, and that involves forgiveness and generosity and integrity and welcoming in the stranger and all the things that we talk about.
SPEAKER_01: That this is what we're being invited to trust.
SPEAKER_01: So I come back here and I just hope that on the days that I can't trust that, that I can't believe that, it just seems too hard that somebody else says, Well, today it's a little bit easier for me.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you a story.
SPEAKER_01: Let me testify, let me witness.
SPEAKER_01: I know these words have been so abusive in other traditions, but let me tell you a story about how God took this thing and something new was made, about how I experienced the shalom and the peace, how I had curing that wasn't, had healing that wasn't curing, that I found hope.
SPEAKER_01: That God took the worst reality and in some way that I don't understand.
SPEAKER_01: Looking back, I was part of the creation of something that was beautiful and inspiring, that gave breath and life.
SPEAKER_01: I think this is the invitation.
SPEAKER_01: When we look at Jesus as the face of the living God, and we are told that by believing in that, by trusting in that reality, we will have life abundant.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's what it means.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's it.
SPEAKER_00: This is where life is at.
SPEAKER_01: I want to say the Lord is risen.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord is not only risen, but the Lord, I do believe, is active, participatory in this community, in the world, in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And then we can trust that.
SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
SPEAKER_01: But we can, and if we can trust that a little bit more and change the way that we're looking and perceiving in the world, then we will experience life.
SPEAKER_00: And we can be a part of having other people experience more life.