2a Easter - I Ptr. 1.3-9 Faith and What Is, (was, and is to come)
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
The Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter immediately moves us toward a rich, comprehensive and comprehensible experience of faith. To the room where disciples were quartered for fear of the authorities - that the same thing that happened to their Leader might happen to them - came a surprising presence: the fearless Leader Himself!
"Peace be with you," He said. Of so much that could be said, we can simply say that this greeting banishes the palpable fear in the room. "For He is our peace," wrote the letter to the Ephesians, "breaking down the walls of distrust and fear." (2. ) [Walls, of course, are the great confession of how afraid its erectors are.] Peace, in the context of what Jesus declares, is the unity that faith brings. What's contested or questioned in today's readings isn't the content of peace or faith; it's faith itself and what that means for those gathered at the table with their fingernails ground to bone.
The presence of the Risen Lord brings about the crisis of faith. Every assembly of where the Gospel is proclaimed brings on such a crisis. "Receive the Holy Spirit. Your sins are forgiven," declares Jesus. Those assembled answer, "Credo! Credo!" Those that don't are silent on the question with another word in response. Oh, and absence has a role as well.
"Unless I set my hands in his wounds, poke my hands in His side," said Thomas the Twin, " I won't believe. Words directly to His society of friends, implicitly to God. In the account of Thomas' struggle is revealed not simply about the appearance of Jesus, but the presence of Jesus. Perhaps Thomas could have gone along with Jesus dropping by, but the presence undeterred by locked doors, and the revealing of His glorious wounds led Thomas to go with a full on Credo, "My Lord and my God," the 'highest' confession of Jesus in the New Testament.
Faith, belief, and trust are generally translations of one word in the NT, which leads to a deeper understanding I think than the word we understand. One of our historic tensions with the Roman Catholic theological view is that faith for the most part is seen as a flat, intellectual grasp of things, where faith is more like, "I agree it happened" or the faith as "beliefs held in common". But faith, especially related directed to the Gospel for Lutherans, from the witness of the New Testament is more often about trusting, grasping, taking into ourselves, believing in the good news that is "for us and for our salvation." A (Lutheran) confessional understanding of faith means that "good works necessarily follow," so faith in Christ enables and empowers "good works". As a matter of fact, the only good works there are faith-in-Christ enabled. Faith in Christ's death and resurrection is not an appendix, or a part of a narrative of faith, it's the entire thing! The teaching and preaching Church does nothing without our baseline belief in Jesus Christ and what He is done. Even in the preaching of law distinct from Gospel, we find not so much sense in preaching Law unless it pushes us toward the consolation of Christ.
This sort of understanding of faith informs the Second Reading for today in the First Letter of Peter. We have been born anew, given new birth, the writer tells us. (vv. 3b-4) Our family of origin is now the church of Jesus Christ, Our faith is guarded in the vault of heaven for salvation to redound when Jesus Christ's salvation is fully revealed. The distresses and trials of our lives are to be expected as (get this!) to prove your faith genuine! (v.5) We are enabled to face the changes and chances of our lives fearlessly, faithfully, and courageously as befits a person given a new birth a new family, apart from those good people on self-justification and self-improvement schemes. Faith is involved in what is, was, and is to come, as Christ bestows the fullness of life.
"Although you''ve never seen him, you love him,," we hear from this reading. "Even though you don't see him now, you trust him and so rejoice with a glorious joy that is too much for words."
The joy of our friend Thomas as he saw his risen Lord in person was such an experience. Might it be that his confession of "my Lord and my God" might be a little closer to a hit your thumb with a hammer truth that we usually admit? Could it be that our praise of God confessing Jesus as Lord might be a more visceral, beyond immediate description for us as we give God glory and praise in our worship. The Jesus Who is Risen invites us to no mere fraternity or lodge or service club, for all their service to humanity. Jesus' resurrection from the dead draws us to a new reality, a new creation which apart from him we can never know, never experience.
In the Gospel of John we hear of a Christ who though his cross draws all people to himself. Thomas saw the wounds and believed to remind us of the greater blessing we have, of those who "have not seen and yet have come to believe." (Jn. 19.29) In solidarity with all the church, particularly with those who suffer through or in the present time, know that our true life is held in the strong vault of heaven, where God is, was, and is to be. Faith in him unites our faith with those of every time and every place in the Holy Eucharist, where we taste the beginning of the end of the world, which is to fall into the loving arms of God in Jesus Christ.
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluiia.
The Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter immediately moves us toward a rich, comprehensive and comprehensible experience of faith. To the room where disciples were quartered for fear of the authorities - that the same thing that happened to their Leader might happen to them - came a surprising presence: the fearless Leader Himself!
"Peace be with you," He said. Of so much that could be said, we can simply say that this greeting banishes the palpable fear in the room. "For He is our peace," wrote the letter to the Ephesians, "breaking down the walls of distrust and fear." (2. ) [Walls, of course, are the great confession of how afraid its erectors are.] Peace, in the context of what Jesus declares, is the unity that faith brings. What's contested or questioned in today's readings isn't the content of peace or faith; it's faith itself and what that means for those gathered at the table with their fingernails ground to bone.
The presence of the Risen Lord brings about the crisis of faith. Every assembly of where the Gospel is proclaimed brings on such a crisis. "Receive the Holy Spirit. Your sins are forgiven," declares Jesus. Those assembled answer, "Credo! Credo!" Those that don't are silent on the question with another word in response. Oh, and absence has a role as well.
"Unless I set my hands in his wounds, poke my hands in His side," said Thomas the Twin, " I won't believe. Words directly to His society of friends, implicitly to God. In the account of Thomas' struggle is revealed not simply about the appearance of Jesus, but the presence of Jesus. Perhaps Thomas could have gone along with Jesus dropping by, but the presence undeterred by locked doors, and the revealing of His glorious wounds led Thomas to go with a full on Credo, "My Lord and my God," the 'highest' confession of Jesus in the New Testament.
Faith, belief, and trust are generally translations of one word in the NT, which leads to a deeper understanding I think than the word we understand. One of our historic tensions with the Roman Catholic theological view is that faith for the most part is seen as a flat, intellectual grasp of things, where faith is more like, "I agree it happened" or the faith as "beliefs held in common". But faith, especially related directed to the Gospel for Lutherans, from the witness of the New Testament is more often about trusting, grasping, taking into ourselves, believing in the good news that is "for us and for our salvation." A (Lutheran) confessional understanding of faith means that "good works necessarily follow," so faith in Christ enables and empowers "good works". As a matter of fact, the only good works there are faith-in-Christ enabled. Faith in Christ's death and resurrection is not an appendix, or a part of a narrative of faith, it's the entire thing! The teaching and preaching Church does nothing without our baseline belief in Jesus Christ and what He is done. Even in the preaching of law distinct from Gospel, we find not so much sense in preaching Law unless it pushes us toward the consolation of Christ.
This sort of understanding of faith informs the Second Reading for today in the First Letter of Peter. We have been born anew, given new birth, the writer tells us. (vv. 3b-4) Our family of origin is now the church of Jesus Christ, Our faith is guarded in the vault of heaven for salvation to redound when Jesus Christ's salvation is fully revealed. The distresses and trials of our lives are to be expected as (get this!) to prove your faith genuine! (v.5) We are enabled to face the changes and chances of our lives fearlessly, faithfully, and courageously as befits a person given a new birth a new family, apart from those good people on self-justification and self-improvement schemes. Faith is involved in what is, was, and is to come, as Christ bestows the fullness of life.
"Although you''ve never seen him, you love him,," we hear from this reading. "Even though you don't see him now, you trust him and so rejoice with a glorious joy that is too much for words."
The joy of our friend Thomas as he saw his risen Lord in person was such an experience. Might it be that his confession of "my Lord and my God" might be a little closer to a hit your thumb with a hammer truth that we usually admit? Could it be that our praise of God confessing Jesus as Lord might be a more visceral, beyond immediate description for us as we give God glory and praise in our worship. The Jesus Who is Risen invites us to no mere fraternity or lodge or service club, for all their service to humanity. Jesus' resurrection from the dead draws us to a new reality, a new creation which apart from him we can never know, never experience.
In the Gospel of John we hear of a Christ who though his cross draws all people to himself. Thomas saw the wounds and believed to remind us of the greater blessing we have, of those who "have not seen and yet have come to believe." (Jn. 19.29) In solidarity with all the church, particularly with those who suffer through or in the present time, know that our true life is held in the strong vault of heaven, where God is, was, and is to be. Faith in him unites our faith with those of every time and every place in the Holy Eucharist, where we taste the beginning of the end of the world, which is to fall into the loving arms of God in Jesus Christ.
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluiia.
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