Easter 2c.07                                                             April 15, 2007

“He placed his right hand on me, saying,

         ‘Do not be afraid.
         I am the first and the last, the living one.
         I was dead, and see, now I am alive forever and ever.’”

St. John the Divine, exiled on Patmos lived in a small cave.
I have seen it.
They have built a shrine in it. There are icons all over.
But in John’s day, it was a dark and gloomy den.
The Risen Lord appeared to John there and said,

          “Do not be afraid. . . .
          I was dead, and see, now I am alive forever and ever.”

The first Easter, the disciples had been hiding in fear
          behind locked doors when Jesus appeared, and said,

          “Peace be with you.
          As the Father sent me, so I send you.”

He said, “Peace be with you.”
In other words, “do not be afraid.
          Stop cringing in the dark.”

In our Gospel lesson,
          the disciples are in hiding,
          because Jesus has just been crucified.
The basic fact is Jesus is dead.
The basic feeling is fear.

In our Revelation lesson,
          St. John the Divine has been exiled to a small island
                   off the coast of Turkey.
The churches of Turkey are afraid because
          the Roman Emperor, Domitian,
has launched the first Empire-wide persecution of the Church.

Just as it appeared on the first Easter that Rome
          had killed Christ and defeated his mission,
it now appeared that Rome had crucified the Church, the Body of Christ,
          and the mission would fail.

Once again, the Risen Lord appeared and said,

          “Do not be afraid. . . .
          I was dead, and see, now I am alive forever and ever.”

Today’s lessons are about faith.
But the meaning of the word faith has narrowed in recent centuries.
It has come to mean agreeing that certain things are true
          even if we can’t prove them.
But the word faith used to be deeper and richer than that.
When Paul said we are saved by grace through faith,
          he meant something much deeper and richer
                  than believing there is a God and Jesus is his son.
In his book, The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg
          reminds us that there are four meanings to the word “faith.”

The first is trust.
Christian faith is first and foremost faith in – not faith that.
It’s faith in God, faith in Jesus.
To have faith in a person is to trust them personally.
God is the foundation of reality. Jesus is the heart of the world.
To have faith in God and Jesus
         is to have basic trust, a fundamental confidence,
         the elemental courage to live boldly.

This faith isn’t just in the head.
It isn’t just agreeing with the Bible and the preacher.
It’s in the heart.
This kind of faith is not the opposite of skepticism.
It is the opposite of fear,
         and it makes all the difference
         for how we live each and every day.

The second meaning is related to the first.
It is faith as vision.

John is the Gospel that stresses faith and believing.
John constantly uses seeing, or vision, as a metaphor of faith
         because faith is a way of looking at the world.
We talk of seeing with the eyes of faith.
Faith is an outlook or set of assumptions about reality.
We interpret whatever happens, we see everything
         through a certain lens of assumptions.

Theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr said there are three basic outlooks
         to choose from.
First, we may see reality as hostile and threatening.
Second, we may see it as cold and indifferent.
Third, we may see reality as life-giving and nourishing.
We might say, “gracious.”
The disciples hiding in fear behind locked doors
         and St. John the Divine despairing over the slaughter

         of the Church
                  from his dark island cave
         must have seen the world as hostile and threatening
         or at best cold and indifferent.
But in both cases the Risen Lord appeared and said,

         “Do not be afraid. Peace be with you.
         The crucifixion was real but it was not the last word.
         See, I am the last word and I am alive.”

Faith is an outlook that does not despair.
It sees the miracle of the cosmos, the miracle of life,
         and says reality must be gracious.
When there are tragedies along the way,
         the grace that created us will redeem us
                   and all will be well.
Such faith is not the opposite of questioning.
It is the opposite of despair.

The third meaning of Christian faith is fidelity to God.
It means sticking with God who is our rock and our salvation.
When life gets scary we are apt to flail about grasping at straws.
“Any port in the storm,” we say.

The Biblical term for that is idolatry,
    trusting in something other than God to do what only God can do.
Fidelity means banking on God to pull us through,
   to make our lives count for something,
   to show us the way to joy.
This faith is not the opposite of admitting we don’t know.
It’s the opposite of looking to something other than God
   to make us safe.

Finally, faith means believing.
But the word “believe” isn’t about opinions in our heads.
When Jesus tells Thomas to believe,
        he is echoing what he said at the Last Supper,

        “Do not let you hearts be troubled.
        Believe in God. Believe also in me.”
Now he says, “Shalom. Peace be with you. Believe.”
Believing is about hearts being untroubled
        because we have given them to Christ.

Our word “believe” comes from the Middle English beleven,
        which means literally “to love.”
Beleven was the word in Chaucer’s day to translate
        the Latin credo – the first word of the Apostles Creed

                 – the word from which “creed” is derived.

Credo – now translated “I believe” – derives from cor do,
         literally, “I give my heart.”
“Credo God the Father almighty . . .
         Credo Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord . . .”
Not “It’s my opinion that God exists;”
         not “ I am convinced that Jesus is his son.”
But “I give my heart to God . . . I give my heart to Jesus.”
It’s a commitment from the soul – not an idea in the head.

So the message of today’s lessons is not a threat but a promise.
The message isn’t accept the Church’s teachings or else.
It’s “Do not let your hearts be troubled.
         Do not be afraid.
         Peace be with you.
         Because when the world has done it’s worst,
                 when Pilate has crucified Jesus,
                 when Domitian has slain the Church,
                 when our lives are falling apart
                      and we feel as if we are on the brink of disaster,
         Christ is alive.
         Christ is the sacred heard of the world.
         And Christ loves us, values us, and has the power to redeem us
                  from whatever happens.
         As Christ came up from his tomb,
                  we will come up from our tombs
                          into the glory of God.

We are not here by accident.
We are here by the loving will of God,
        and God’s loving will is stronger than anything,
                  even death.
With that faith,
        we can come out from our caves of despair,
        we can come out from behind the locked doors of fear,
                and we can live this life we have been given,
                we can live it boldly, joyfully, and creatively.

                                                                    Amen.