A Fourth Church Sermon by Sarah Jo Sarchet

April 22, 2001 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Now What?

Sarah Jo Sarchet
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Revelation 1:4–8
John 20:19–31

Now what? It’s just one short week after Easter, and here we are again, hearing more parts of the Easter story and wondering how it is that the story has really affected our lives. How do we, like Thomas, come to believe what we have been told? How do we make the Easter story our own? How do we receive the new life that Christ has offered to us? We’ve been through the high holy days, and now we’re headed back into the more ordinary days of our lives, and so we ask, “Well, now what?”

Poet, mystic, philosopher, and theologian Howard Thurman says that “particular experiences of the moment are the doors through which we enter wider meaning.” He says, “We live our way deeply in the present, only to be invaded by the Eternal.” The invasion of the Eternal, into our present moment—that’s what we have sung about and proclaimed on Easter Sunday, and that experience is what we are to carry forward with us every week, as we are Easter people.

Particular experiences of the moment—the doors through which we enter wide, with the rolling away of the stone from the tomb—open meaning to us. “We mark time by events,” Thurman says and goes on to tell a story of the summer a bus broke down in the small town in which he grew up. He remembers that summer by that event. One by one, passengers from faraway places disembarked from a broken-down bus to wander around, stretch their legs, and get some exercise as they waited for and hoped for another bus to come. The strangers stared at the townspeople and the townspeople stared at the strangers in mutual curiosity. Thurman remembers distinctly when two ladies stepped off the bus. They strolled around the square for exercise, and then one of them did something that had never been done before in that small town square: she lit and smoked a cigar as she strolled. Says Thurman, “From thereafter that summer was remembered as ‘the summer the lady lit a cigar in the square.’”

Events mark our life and our lives together—events that startle us, that surprise us, that touch us, or that have deep significance for us. I noticed on the Today show that this week marked the anniversary of the Columbine shooting, the second anniversary. That was an event that marked that community and us as a people, as a nation, as a culture. Some events that mark our lives are smaller, closer to home, more particular to our individual situation, to our family. For some, this is the year our first child will be born. For some, this is the year my spouse died. For some, this is the year we were married. For some, this is the day our children were baptized. These are events that mark us and touch us and change us and that affect the stories of our lives.

The church liturgical year is marked by events, most especially by Christmas and Easter, and then by seasons in between. This is the first Sunday past Easter, the first Sunday of the season called Eastertide. We’ve followed the Gospel from its beginning to its end, with its particular events and moments and stories that have marked us and taught us, changed us, and challenged us, from Christmas to Easter, from cradle to cross, from Advent to Lent, from the stable to the tomb, from Bethlehem to Nazareth, to Galilee to Jerusalem. We’ve traveled the journey with Jesus. Now what?

I have to believe that “Now what?” was the question the disciples were asking on that first Easter Sunday evening. Closed up in the upper room, afraid, uncertain: “Now what do we do with our lives?v they must have asked. And that’s when Jesus appeared to them. The one whom John had described in the beginning of his Gospel as the Word become flesh to dwell among them had suddenly and mysteriously now come among them as resurrected flesh. He spoke a familiar greeting of peace and showed them his hands and his side and then began to answer their questions of “Now what?” “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” he said, and he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This one, standing among them, was the one of whom John the Baptist had proclaimed was to baptize with the Holy Spirit. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit.” A mission? A command? An invitation?

Thomas missed it. He was absent, but later the others relayed the news to him. They told him of the new event that marked their lives: they had seen and experienced the risen Christ, a phenomenon they couldn’t explain or defend but that they could tell with their lips and their lives.

But then there’s Thomas. Thomas, thank God for Thomas. Thomas wanted more than a mere account of the risen Christ. He wanted to experience and know the risen Christ for himself. He wanted a personal experience of that kind of faith. Ronald Rolheiser, in his book The Holy Longing: The Search for Christian Spirituality, notes that to have a personal and living faith, a rich and meaningful spirituality, is difficult. It’s difficult to discover and difficult to sustain, even within the church, he says. It’s easier to have faith in Christianity, in a code of ethics, in Jesus’ moral teaching, and in God’s call for justice, than it is to have a personal faith, a particular faith, in a living God.

Thank God for Thomas. Thomas who insisted on having a personal faith, a particular faith, in the living God. The disciples told him about the gifts that had been given them when Jesus appeared to them, three gifts that the risen Lord had offered them, the gifts of faith. The first gift was the promise “Peace be with you”—a promise that Christ’s peace, which transcends all circumstances, will be with us. The next gift was the gift of purpose: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” This gift told them that their life was about more than their own lives, that they were attached to something bigger than themselves, that they were part of the eternal working out of God’s way in the world, that their purpose was to be modeled after Jesus’ purpose: spreading God’s love and grace and forgiveness and generosity and truth in the world. The third gift was power: he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Receive the gift of the Companion, the Comforter, the Advocate the Sustainer, the power that Jesus promised would be with the disciples even after he’d gone.

The promise of peace, the purpose of living, the power of the Spirit, these are the gifts the disciples received, and these were the gifts that Thomas wished and wanted for himself. Who wouldn’t? Isn’t that the experience we all want—to be touched and to touch God personally? Perhaps that’s ultimately why we all come here: so we can see and receive the gifts of faith. Perhaps that’s why we bring our babies, our relationships, our prayers, our friends, our families, our hopes, our uncertainties. The events of our lives we bring to church, because we want them to be marked by faith. Like Thomas, we want our lives to be touched by and to touch the holy. We want the gifts of faith for our very own.

Now what? Now what will we as Easter people do with ourselves? I think the challenge of this day and every day is to follow Thomas’s lead. To want the experience of the risen Christ so much, so personally for ourselves, that we don’t give up until we find it. That we pursue the gifts of faith in prayer, in community, in worship, in study, in Scripture, so that we discover and experience the risen Christ among us.

A promise, a purpose, a power. Thomas waited, and I think in his waiting for the Lord to come to him, he certainly must have prayed. I don’t think his waiting was idle. We don’t know what happened in the seven or eight days between Jesus’ appearances to the disciples, but my guess is Thomas prayed, “Lord show yourself to me, too. Lord, grant me the gifts of faith as well.”

There are so many things, good and bad, within us and around us, that turn us away from times of prayer. The things that keep us from prayer and from deepening our lives of faith are many. Some are innocent, and some are clutter. How do we find place and time for prayer, communion with God? Robert Moore, University of Chicago psychologist and philosopher of religion, points out that if we don’t find faith and time for communion with God, if we don’t pray, we inevitably will become depressed or inflated, or we will bounce back and forth between the two. There’s a fine line between them spiritually and psychologically and emotionally. Says Moore, “If we don’t pray, we will either be habitually despaired or obsessed with our own ego.” Prayer centers us and reveals to us who we are and whose we are and how we are to answer God’s calling and live as people of God. Henri Nouwen, gifted theologian and spiritual mentor to many, talks about prayer as the center of his life. He says, “It is not a period of serious attentiveness to the divine mysteries. On the contrary, it is full of distractions, inner restlessness, sleepiness, confusion, and boredom. It seldom pleases my senses.” But, he says, “I know that when I pray, I can feel all that I feel and sense and experience, without trying to hide anything, and truly that must please God.” Somehow, somewhere, he says, “I know that God loves me, even though I do not feel that love as I can feel a human embrace, even though I do not hear a voice as I hear human words of consolation, even though I do not see a smile, as I can see in a human face. Still God speaks to me, looks at me, and embraces me, and I know that I am loved.” Isn’t that what Thomas wanted? Isn’t that what you and I want—to commune with God and know that we belong to God and to be touched by God’s love.

That’s the season we are in. The season of Eastertide. The fifty days between Easter and Pentecost when the church focuses on recognizing the risen Christ in our mist and responding to him in our lives. So now what? I think we do well in this Eastertide to follow Thomas’s lead, to pray deeply and daily and expect and accept the gifts of faith to be ours.

A command, a commissioning, an invitation—all that, yes, and more. A new beginning, as Easter people—that’s what we are about this weekend and in the weeks that follow. Easter people who have been marked by Christ in our baptism. Easter people who have been marked by our resurrection faith and filled with the Holy Spirit. That’s what. That’s now. That’s us. Believers and doubters who have become believers, sent forth Spirit-filled to share the breath of God with the world. This Eastertide, so be it and may it be so for us. Amen.