SPEAKER_01: Reading from Acts When the temple police had brought the apostles, they had them stand before the council.
SPEAKER_01: The high priest questioned them, saying, We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name.
SPEAKER_01: Yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you are determined to bring this man's blood on us.
SPEAKER_01: But Peter and the apostles answered, We must obey God rather than any human authority.
SPEAKER_01: The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.
SPEAKER_01: God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior, that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_01: And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: A reading from Revelation.
SPEAKER_02: John to the seven churches that are in Asia.
SPEAKER_02: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are from his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth, to him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father.
SPEAKER_02: To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to John.
SPEAKER_00: When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.
SPEAKER_00: After he said this, he showed him his hands and his side.
SPEAKER_00: Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you.
SPEAKER_00: As the Father has sent me, so I send you.
SPEAKER_00: When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.
SPEAKER_00: But Thomas, who is called the twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.
SPEAKER_00: So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But he said to them, Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails, and my hand in his side, I will not believe.
SPEAKER_00: A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them.
SPEAKER_00: Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.
SPEAKER_00: Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here and see my hands.
SPEAKER_00: Reach out your hand and put it in my side.
SPEAKER_00: Do not doubt, but believe.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you have seen me?
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.
SPEAKER_00: Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written, so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But once in a while, things are a little different.
SPEAKER_00: Something like Forced Gump.
SPEAKER_00: The opening scenes are actually the end scenes, the ending of the narrative.
SPEAKER_00: And the point of the movie is not so much about what happens at the end, but how we get to the end.
SPEAKER_00: And I offer you today that our different readings are similar to that.
SPEAKER_00: They start somewhere in the middle and then jump to the end and then move to the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe one of the things that these readings have to offer us is not so much a reflection of what happens in each moment as an awareness of the journey that it takes us through.
SPEAKER_00: So scene one, Acts of the Apostles.
SPEAKER_00: This is early days of the church, shortly after the ascension, right before the scene we get to today with Peter, where he's defending himself instead of the in front of the established community, religious community.
SPEAKER_00: Peter and John are imprisoned.
SPEAKER_00: See, they were out preaching the good news of new life that can be found in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And the religious community does not like that.
SPEAKER_00: And so they lock them up.
SPEAKER_00: Angel comes along in the middle of the night, frees them.
SPEAKER_00: And what does Peter do?
SPEAKER_00: What would most of us do?
SPEAKER_00: We would lie low for a while, let things cool down, and then maybe try it one more time when we thought it was safe again.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe we'd go to a different town and see if things were received better there.
SPEAKER_00: That would be the logical thing to do, I would suggest.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not what Peter does.
SPEAKER_00: Right after he is freed from prison, he once again goes to the same place and preaches the same good news.
SPEAKER_00: Surprise, surprise, he gets the same result too.
SPEAKER_00: He is there preaching with authority, the authority of Jesus Christ, saying that the authority of Christ is greater than anything those religious leaders have to offer.
SPEAKER_00: But how did Peter get there?
SPEAKER_00: And just last week we were reading about how Peter denied Jesus three times.
SPEAKER_00: Before that, he had such little faith.
SPEAKER_00: When he was told he could walk on water, he sank.
SPEAKER_00: But this is the same Peter now, who has this outrageous, kind of crazy courage to speak in front of crowds and to profess the good news that Christ has to offer.
SPEAKER_00: How did he get there?
SPEAKER_00: Scene two, Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: We hear of the seven churches, and that this message that we read today was for them.
SPEAKER_00: And the word seven is not just seven literal churches, but seven meaning complete, full, a lot of churches.
SPEAKER_00: So we go from a small band of believers to now having churches throughout Asia.
SPEAKER_00: Not only are there lots of churches now, but they have this formed theology, this formed Christology and understanding of who Christ is.
SPEAKER_00: We hear this in the words of identifying Jesus as faithful witness, firstborn of the dead, ruler of the kings of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Seeing Jesus as a faithful witness is saying that Jesus is the evidence itself, that everything Jesus taught was true and is true, and that the world is changing and being transformed.
SPEAKER_00: Firstborn of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was the first to be resurrected, but that word first implies that there are many more resurrections yet to happen.
SPEAKER_00: Resurrection is a work in progress.
SPEAKER_00: Rulers of the kings of the earth speak to the fact that all are accountable to Christ, that while empires may fall, as predicted in Revelation, that all rulers are accountable and submissive to Christ, that Christ is the King and Lord of all.
SPEAKER_00: But how did John, when writing Revelation, get to this point of having this vision and having all these churches to write to?
SPEAKER_00: How did they get there when not so long ago the disciples seemed to be a bunch of confused souls, helpless souls, who couldn't make their way around a parable without cliff notes?
SPEAKER_00: And now there is not only a planted church in many different cities, but there is a forming of a theology, a theology that we still grow on today.
SPEAKER_00: Scene three.
SPEAKER_00: Back in the house, it's Easter day, and the doors are locked because the disciples are scared.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know what to make of any of this.
SPEAKER_00: Peter earlier that day runs to the tomb and finds it empty, and that alone was not enough to build his faith, was not enough alone to make sense of everything that he had learned while he was with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: While we often call Thomas the one who's doubting, it seems to me that it's all the disciples in this case.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they had the first experien, not the first, but they had an experience of Jesus on Easter Day in that evening in that locked room.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus gives them a commission and the Holy Spirit to go out into the world.
SPEAKER_00: And yet a week later, they're still in that room hiding away.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's Thomas, who, again, maybe seeming doubting, but we don't actually hear in this passage of him actually reaching out and touching the wounds.
SPEAKER_00: It seems like once he actually saw Jesus, that that was enough for things to click.
SPEAKER_00: It seems to me that those wounds that Jesus offers that day to the disciples, those wounds speak of many things that we can learn from.
SPEAKER_00: I think one of those truths is that resurrection itself is a work in progress.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Jesus being God could show up in any form, and he chooses to show up with wounds still.
SPEAKER_00: But I suggest it is in part because it's this idea that even Jesus' new resurrected body is still becoming whole, is still in the process of receiving that new life, even if it was only a reminder for us, that we ourselves are a work in progress, that we ourselves have these wounds that over time can heal, can turn into scars, and that new life can be experienced.
SPEAKER_00: So if Jesus shows up to us revealing his scars to us, we can choose to either put our finger in the side and feel the wound, or we can put it on the edges and feel that new life, those new cells of life growing and that new health.
SPEAKER_00: If we keep our fingers in the center, then at some point we would stop the ability for the wound to heal.
SPEAKER_00: But if we move our hand from that, we allow that healing process to happen.
SPEAKER_00: I think in our own lives, quite often we get in the way of that healing life that God offers us.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not to say that those wounds aren't part of the journey and part of how we do grow.
SPEAKER_00: This reminds me of a tree or group of trees I've noticed in British Columbia.
SPEAKER_00: Growing up in Pennsylvania, all our forests were really small, and I could literally hug just about any tree in any forest.
SPEAKER_00: But going to the West Coast, I discovered that the conifers were huge.
SPEAKER_00: Ones in British Columbia aren't quite as big as the redwoods of California, but it still takes multiple people to be able to truly hug a tree.
SPEAKER_00: And one thing that's cool is the trees, when they die and they fall over and there's a stump, quite frequently a new tree is planted on the top of it.
SPEAKER_00: And this new tree gains life from that stump.
SPEAKER_00: That decaying matter of that stump provides the vital nutrients that tree needs for new life and new growth.
SPEAKER_00: And eventually that old stump will deteriorate and grow and dissipate.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll just see this tree with these really odd root systems above the ground in this hollowed out space where this stump had once been.
SPEAKER_00: And when we're walking through a forest, or when we are interacting with another person in their lives, either way, we are only having a snapshot of their story, whether it's a forest or a human being.
SPEAKER_00: We can look at where they are and get a glimpse of maybe what had come in the past, but we really have no idea of what growth and new life may be coming in the future.
SPEAKER_00: When I went to India back in 2006 to live there and to work with the poor, I went because I believed that God was offering the women there new life, new life in the present, new life that would be experienced through having financial freedoms, no longer being oppressed by the financial realities of poverty.
SPEAKER_00: I believed that that was part of new life for the women of India.
SPEAKER_00: I went there, and yet while I was there, I found myself broken and overly aware of my own wounds, areas of my life that were decomposing matter.
SPEAKER_00: And I had that moment where I realized that I believed in new life for those women more than I believed in new life for myself.
SPEAKER_00: At one point, finally, God gave me the vision, the strength, and the courage to let go of those wounds and to instead of putting leaving my hand in the side, trust in new life and allow those wounds to heal.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is, I am still on a journey.
SPEAKER_00: A journey of experiencing what new life now through Christ means for me.
SPEAKER_00: I think we're still all on this journey.
SPEAKER_00: Don't know where we will end up, not exactly anyway, but we do have faith that we know that we have new life in Christ, and that really what matters is how we get there.
SPEAKER_00: Are you willing to get locked up in a jail?
SPEAKER_00: Are you willing to gain a deeper understanding of who God truly is and that new life that God offers you?
SPEAKER_00: Are you willing to be the one who reveals yourself as a follower of Jesus so through you and your love, others can experience Jesus and grow and gain new life themselves?