Services
This morning Jesus calls us to be rooted and grounded in him, John 15:1-8, he is the vine we are the branches. Divorced from Christ we can do nothing yet if we abide in him, we must also abide in one another, the branches are all intimately connected. In Acts 8:26-40 we encounter someone who does not feel connected and who experiences the pain and injustice of not belonging. The Ethiopian eunuch is wealthy and educated (he rides in a chariot and reads Isaiah) yet he is enslaved; he has come to Jerusalem to worship yet he is not Jewish and would not have been allowed to enter the temple; he was born male but no longer has the status of a man; and, when Philip meets him, he is travelling the non-man’s land between Jerusalem and Gaza. He feels his outsider status keenly for he recognises in Isaiah’s meditation on the suffering servant, the description of one who, like him, has been “cut off from the land of the living” because he can have no offspring. He is searching scripture for a reflection of himself, for a place where he can belong. We may have many questions for him but he has questions for us: what will it mean for all of us if the gospel is indeed good news for all people, without exception? He holds up for us a mirror and asks us to see if he is reflected there. Is there a space for him in our community? are we, rooted and grounded in Christ, a place where he too can belong?
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday and we hear, John 10:11-18, Jesus telling us that he is the good shepherd, the one who lays down his life for his sheep. More than this, he knows the sheep, they belong to him. To whom we belong is also at the heart of Acts 4:5-12. Here the disciples are being questioned by the authorities about healing the man born lame. They appear less interested in the fact that the man is healed than by “what power and what name” he was healed. To whom do the disciples owe allegiance? Are they one of “us” or are they one of “them”. Jesus does not only look after the sheep of this fold, he must gather all the sheep, so that there may be one flock. For him there is no “us” and “them”, we are all one. When we belong to Jesus we also belong to this great flock and they belong to us. If Jesus is out there, finding, gathering and protecting them, we should be alongside him.
Resurrection is harder than it looks. In Acts 3:12-26, the disciples are full of confidence, addressing the crowd immediately after healing a man who was lame. Yet, in Luke 24:36b-48, when the risen Jesus appears to them, they are described as: startled, terrified, frightened, doubtful and unbelieving. Jesus shows them his hands and his feet, he asks them for food, telling them that it really is him, just as they knew him. Perhaps this is the problem. The risen Jesus is too much like the Jesus they knew, still wounded, still hungry. The resurrection has not removed the scars of his mistreatment or his very human needs and limitations. If God’s power can defeat death surely it can make everything new? God’s power is not like human power, it is revealed not in strength but in weakness. By the time we get to Acts, Peter has recognised this, asking the crowd: “why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” Accepting our weakness and brokenness, our inability to repair our mistakes and fix things on our own is the necessary first step needed before we can allow God’s power to work in us and through us.
Last Sunday we rejoiced at the resurrection, the disciples, however, didn’t. A week later our gospel, John 20:19-31, finds them hiding away in a locked room afraid of what the future holds for them. Thomas often gets a bad press for doubting but the other disciples are not doing much better: Jesus has already come to them offering peace, sending them out as the Father sent him but a week later, when Jesus returns, they still haven’t moved. Perhaps Thomas did not believe them the first time because despite encountering the risen Lord, they hadn’t changed. However, the fact that they doubt, that they fail to act, is what makes them perfect for the job; because the job is forgiveness, and who better to know the joy of forgiveness, the significance of a new beginning, than someone who has been in need of forgiveness not just once but again and again. By the time we come to the story in Acts 4:32-35, the disciples have changed, they have started to live as if new life were truly possible.
Christ is always returning to us, continually offering us the gift of the spirit, repeatedly inviting us to begin again. The fact that we are failures makes us perfect for the job too. Knowing how rubbish we are at being Christian, at doing God’s will, puts us in the perfect position to forgive the faults and failings of others and invite them to begin again alongside us.
Our Festival Easter Mass starts at 10.30am. Here we bless the Easter garden and renew our baptismal vows: we die with Christ and are raised by him into new life.
Our readings for both services recount the resurrection and a God who can transform death and failure to new life and hope. This is ultimate power and yet it is shown in vulnerability: God never coerces us, never exerts power over us and so we remain free to respond. In Acts 10. 34-43 Peter responds with confidence, joyfully proclaiming the resurrection. Yet in Mark 12:1-8 the first witnesses of the empty tomb stay silent, for they are afraid. The angel at the tomb offers the possibility of a new beginning, calling the disciples to return again to Galilee. The choice is ours: will we risk following Christ who has gone ahead of us, or we will we hang back, fearful of the new life offered?