A Fourth Church Sermon by Calum I. MacLeod

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April 3, 2005 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Blowing on the Embers

Calum I. MacLeod
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3–9
John 20:19–31

“He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”

John 20:22 (NRSV)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
“God’s Grandeur”

We stand today in solidarity with our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers throughout the Archdiocese of Chicago and indeed people throughout the world as they mourn the death of Pope John Paul II. Particularly in our prayers are our friends and mission partners at Holy Name Cathedral: their pastor, Father Dan Mayall, and Francis Cardinal George, as he travels to Rome. With them we give thanks for the extraordinary life of this man of faith, celebrating his passion for peace and social justice and his sincerity in following his Master. As a mark of respect, the flag in the Garth here at Fourth Presbyterian Church will be flown at half-mast today.

In every age, O God, you send those who give their lives fully to your service.
This day we give thanks for your servant John Paul II,
for his steadfastness and love and care for his people.
May his example of compassion and forgiveness and care for the poor
inspire your church for the future.
And now draw near to us, gracious God,
and grant to us the light of your Holy Spirit,
that in your light we may see light
and in your strength be strong. Amen.

There’s a curious disjunction in time in the church calendar as it relates to scripture that happens at this time each year. I’m not talking about the torture of losing an hour of sleep overnight as we change the clocks. You see, according to scripture, the crowds came out in force on Palm Sunday, and a week later, on Easter, there were only the disciples—hiding, locked in, a few shell-shocked disoriented followers, a remnant, we might say. But in our world and our reality that all is shifted forward by a week. Easter Sunday is when we get the crowds, the hallelujahs, the shoving and pushing (to get the best seats, that is). And today, a week later, no need for crowd control or ropes and stanchions on Michigan Avenue. Just a kind of a remnant—not exactly hiding, but gathered in a room, dealing with the aftermath. What did it mean? This resurrection business—what does it mean?

The preacher at Harvard, Peter Gomes, in a sermon on the Sunday after Easter said this: “Life on the other side of Easter is a strange thing. It is not easy.” And we would agree. Certainly there is a strangeness in the story that we’ve just heard read from John’s Gospel. Maybe that’s it: maybe people don’t want to deal with the strangeness or ambiguity of the Sunday after Easter. Another preacher, Fleming Rutledge, the renowned Episcopalian preacher, wondered aloud in one of her Eastertide sermons why so many people come to church on Easter and don’t come back the Sunday after: “It occurred that the reason is they don’t really believe anything unusual has taken place,” she said.

“Unusual” in the sense that Easter is a life- and world-changing event. So perhaps it’s the case that those of us who’ve gathered today see in Easter something more than just a happy family occasion with the Hallelujah chorus from Messiah and new bonnets and a leg of lamb after church. If so, then we are faced with this strange story about Jesus appearing to his disciples and then taking off somewhere for a week and then coming back to encounter the unbelieving Thomas, who had missed Jesus’ earlier visit.

Good old Thomas. It is quite common on this Sunday for a preacher to concentrate on Thomas, perhaps because, as the great poet Denise Levertov puts it, “Thomas called ‘the Twin’ / because he is my twin.” There is the sense that in Thomas we find legitimacy for some of the struggles and doubts that we have on our faith journeys. Today, however, I want us to focus not on Thomas but on that first appearance of Jesus, the risen Jesus, to the gathered disciples on that first Easter evening.

They’re scared. They’re behind locked doors. They had been fiery once. They had been fishermen, you see—fishers of fish. If you know any fishermen, you know they’re rough, tough folk. They were fishers of fish who became fishers of people and yet remained rough and tough guys. Impetuous at times, running around Galilee with baskets of miraculous food in the open air, chopping off the ear of their opponent’s servant with a sword, often blundering badly but with good intentions. All that’s gone now, all suffocated. The fire that once was—now ashes. And they’re cowering, the door locked. They’re fearful, the text tells us in verse 19.

And into this sad and sorry band comes the risen presence of Christ. “Peace be with you,” he says, bringing into their midst a peace that he had promised before all of the terrible events had happened. And then into this mess of moldering embers comes a new thing: in verse 22, “He breathed on them.” Jesus breathed on them. Now we should be clear that this is not a little breath, like a little puff we might use to blow the seeds of a dandelion away or that little stirring you might use to whisper a sweet nothing in your lover’s ear. X. J. Kennedy, an American poet, puts it beautifully in a poem based on this passage: “Passing through doors unopened he appeared in his disciples’ midst as might a wind hurtling through branches.” You see, this breath is a tree-rustling wind. A Lincoln Park spring day wind. A flame-causing bellow of the lungs—an infusion of life-giving oxygen.

I just finished reading a superb and meaningful and touching novel entitled Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, a very fine contemporary American novelist and writer. In it she tells the story of John Ames, a Congregational minister in a little town called Gilead in Iowa. The novel takes the form of a letter that this old minister is writing to his seven-year-old son. As the old minister nears death, he writes to this son of a miraculous marriage. He tells this story of his son’s great grandfather and grandfather and himself, all pastors and preachers. And as the story goes on, towards the end of the book John Ames reflects on his own faith and encounter with God. Just before the novel closes, he writes this:

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of creation and it turns to radiance for a moment or a year or the span of a life and then it sinks back into itself again and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire or light. That is what I said in that Pentecost sermon. I’ve reflected on that sermon and there is some truth in it. But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.

“The Lord breathed on this poor gray ember of creation.” This is the wind we’re talking about, the breath of God, the wind of the Holy Spirit, the gift of God, the very being of God that sneaks under the graying, lifeless, hopeless mound of ashes and stirs them into a vibrant, dancing, dangerous world-changing fire.

The scholars tell us that this is John’s story of Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the birthday of the church. Maybe this is what people miss when they don’t come to church on the Sunday after Easter. Realizing that it’s not just about a garden and an empty tomb. Or an encounter with a mysterious misidentified gardener. Or a gentle conversation on the road to Emmaus.

I’ve been reading blogs recently, weblogs. There was one written by a guy called Brian Stoffregen. He was commenting on this passage this week, and he said something I found incredibly helpful. He wrote, “The purpose of this resurrection appearance is not so much to prove the resurrection as it is to send the disciples as Jesus had been sent.” He goes on: “Easter is not just coming to a wonderful inspiring worship service. It is being sent back into the hostile world empowered by the Holy Spirit to be a witness to the identity of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.”

That’s us, folks. That’s those of us who gather here today, realizing that the proof of—the reality of—the resurrection is not to be found in biblical archaeology or in the Shroud of Turin. It is in the living presence of the Holy Spirit of Christ our God, blowing on the embers of our being, which have been dampened by fear and hopelessness; rekindling the fire of social justice and peace in our hearts, which was suffocated by selfishness and lack of meaning. This is why we gather here to hear the word and share in the sacrament of bread and cup. This is why we then go back to the hostile world to be tutors to young people, to make dinners for people who are hungry, to advocate for the marginalized and the abused and the outcast, to give our money and our labor for people in Honduras and here in Chicago to build them houses. Not because we’re do-gooders, not because we’re bleeding heart liberals, or because it makes us feel good or better, but because Easter is a life-changing and world-changing event. Because the risen Lord is among us breathing the life-giving breath, blowing the fire-raising wind, giving us his very self and saying, “Take, eat, this is my body.” Sending us to bear unceasing witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ, whom to know is life abundant and whom to serve is perfect freedom. Amen.