The Antidote to Fear
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For April 16, 2023:
The Antidote to Fear
by Dean Feldmeyer
John 20:19-31
I’m afraid of bees. Not just bees. Anything that stings. Wasps. Hornets. Honey bees. Yellow Jackets. You name it, I’m terrified of it. Honest. 71-year-old, 6’4,” 250 pound male and I’m afraid of little bugs. It’s embarrassing.
It all goes back to a childhood trauma that’s too complicated to relate here, but is, most certainly, the cause. I know it’s irrational. I have, after all, been stung dozens of times and survived just fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that stinging insects are “fear triggers” for me. I see one and the adrenaline surges, my heart starts to race, and a fight or flight response kicks in, big time.
We all have fear triggers, things that ignite the fear response in us and set off the fight or flight instinct, and politicians are experts at pulling those triggers:
Woke. Fascist. Liberal. Radical. Activist. Socialist. Pedophile. Assault on. War on. Family values. Racist. Conspiracy. Religious freedom. Pro-life.
Hurl one of those words or phrases in a conversation and you can sense the fight or flight hackles go up in the people around you. Liberal or conservative. It doesn’t matter. Fear works the same. It sends us into a frenzy of attacks, or it paralyzes us.
In this Sunday’s gospel lesson, we find the disciples cowering in a locked room, paralyzed by fear when Jesus shows up and offers them the antidote that sets them free.
In the News
“Is your furnace endangering the lives of your family? A special report, Thursday night at eleven.” The local newscast uses a fear trigger to get us to watch their Thursday night broadcast. (Until, then, I guess you just take your chances.) And we probably do watch because fear is a powerful motivator.
Commercials convince us that we’re getting old and our faces are going to look like relief maps of the South Dakota Badlands if we don’t use their wrinkle remover. Ads for automobile, tire, and brake companies all remind us that the safety of our families is riding on their product.
But the grand prize winners, our most accomplished, professional fear mongers are politicians and the people who run their election campaigns.
“My opponent is a radical, left wing, socialist who hates America and wants to destroy our country.” Sound farfetched? Maybe, but lots of people take that kind of fear trigger seriously and vote accordingly. Fear triggers come from all sides of the political spectrum: She’s a baby killer. He’s a fascist. She’s a left wing, socialist radical. He’s a misogynistic, racist, bully. See how it works? The accusation alone is enough to ignite fear and loathing in the targeted group.
As primary election season draws nearer this spring, we’re going to be experiencing a lot of attempts by those running for office to pull our fear triggers and exploit the fears they ignite.
Says the American Psychological Association, “Fear can sway opinions, but knowing the deliberate and strategic ways in which our fears are exploited can help lessen its effects.” According to their studies, messages that trigger fear in the listener are twice as effective as messages without fear. Fear messages generally attempt to drive people to find perceived safety by being part of a group who think and fear the same things they do. The savvy politicians convince those scared voters that he/she is the best person to address the issue at hand.
Besides motivating people to act in specific ways, fear can also be used to keep people from acting.
In addition to driving votes, fear is also used to diminish voter turnout. According to The Journal of Politics, raising anxiety around an election or candidate is a tactic often used to decrease voter turnout among an opponent’s supporters (The Journal of Politics, Vol. 73, No. 1, 2011; Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 66, No. 2, 2013).
Knowing that our fear triggers are being pulled is one way to avoid being manipulated by those who exploit our fears, but sometimes it isn’t enough. Sometimes knowing I’m being intentionally and strategically scared isn’t enough to keep me from being scared.
The question we must address is the question of fear itself. To paraphrase FDR, “The main thing we have to fear is fear itself.” And in this week’s New Testament lesson, Jesus offers an antidote to fear itself.
In the Scripture
There they are, ten of the eleven remaining disciples, crowded into a room, lights dimmed, doors locked. They’re afraid. Afraid of the temple officials who conspired to have Jesus executed by the Romans.
They don’t know what to do.
Oh, they heard the report of the women but, depending on which gospel account you read, they have either dismissed it out of hand as foolishness or they just don’t know whether to believe it or not. And, even if they do believe it, well, they’re scared. Scared for their lives.
Now, six things happen in rapid succession that are intended to mitigate the fear of the disciples.
One, Jesus shows up. Literally, he “came and stood among them.”
There are some people who, just by showing up, can change the air pressure in the room. Some people do that in a negative way. They show up and you can feel the oxygen, the energy, the life being sucked out of the room the instant they arrive.
But more common, I think, are those people who affect the room positively with their presence. They enter the room and suddenly it’s as if a light that no one knew was there has been turned on. The room seems suddenly brighter, the air lighter, the energy enhanced. The room is, itself, not changed. But everything in it is transformed just by the appearance of this one person.
Jesus was like that. His mere presence transformed a room. The fact that he had been dead less than 24 hours ago, that the women had reported seeing him alive in the garden, that several of his disciples had reported that his tomb was empty — all of these things — contributed to the power of his presence on this particular evening, but it was a presence that would have been notable and powerful even without those added attributes.
Jesus just had to show up to make a difference.
The second thing Jesus does in the story is greet them with a blessing of peace, which fulfills a promise he has made in an earlier chapter to give them peace. This is not peace as we know it — an absence of conflict — this is shalom, that general sense of well-being, of balance, of harmony and good will.
According to the gospel, the opposite of fear is not courage but peace, shalom. Peace is the opposite of fear, the cure for despair, and the appropriate response to doubt and shame.
When we are infused with adrenaline, when our hearts are slamming against our chests, when we jump at every sound, when we are hiding from things we can’t even name, when terror grips us, when doubt ensnares us, when everything we believed in seems smashed and destroyed, Jesus offers us…peace, shalom.
Then he reinforces his message with his own personal witness.
The third thing he does is show them his scars.
He didn’t have to. He’s Jesus, after all. He could have come to them without scars, without wounds of any kind. He could have come to them whole and smiling and filled with a reassurance that suffering and pain are mere illusions. But he does not. He comes to them with scars.
Suffering, pain, even death, are real.
The promise of Jesus Christ is not that these things don’t exist. His promise is that they do exist but that they can be overcome. Scars are not evidence of failure but of victory.
Fourth, having given them the gift of authenticity, he reiterates the gift of peace. Our peace is drawn not from some empty promise, some well-turned phrase, some bit of colloquial Christian jargon. It is, rather, drawn from real life, lived authentically in the midst of real trouble and real turmoil. Our peace is based on a real life well lived.
The fifth thing Jesus does is to commission them. He sends them. He gives them a job to do, a mission.
It is important to note, here, that Jesus does not give his followers — then or now — a gift simply for the sake of the gift. The gift is always given with a purpose. This peace we have been given is not to be held closely and guarded. It is not to be horded and enjoyed for its own sake. It is to be used.
The use to which it is to be put is that of forgiveness.
The calling of the disciples, the commission that is given to us in this story, is the commission of grace. It is our job to continue the work that Jesus began in announcing God’s unending, unrestricted, unconditional love.
We are to be those who announce to the world that you are accepted, your sins are forgiven, your past is approved and your future is open. That God loves and accepts you just the way you are.
If we don’t do it, it won’t get done. The success of the gospel rests upon our shoulders, brothers and sisters.
But not ours alone.
Jesus does one more thing before he departs — one sixth thing. He reminds them of the gift that is God’s Holy spirit and he symbolizes that gift by breathing on them. (In New Testament Greek, the word for spirit and breath is the same word.)
Wherever we go, when we go to do the work of the gospel, to spread through word and deed the good news of God’s grace and acceptance to all of God’s people, then the Holy Spirit of God goes with us, enabling and empowering us to embody God’s love and share it with others.
In the Sermon
There is power in showing up. I think we often give ourselves too little credit. The fact of the matter is that our presence, our mere presence, has power. Where we decide to show up and when and under what circumstances has a great deal of influence.
Some years ago, the county I lived in was contemplating building some low-income apartments near the city limits of the village where we lived. Before any facts were known the debate had already become heated and offensive. Personal barbs were being exchanged, accusations and insults were being thrown around, feelings were getting hurt and a pall was being cast over the entire community.
I was chatting with a member of city council one day as he commiserated with me about the tenor and tone of the discussions that were taking place. A town hall meeting had been scheduled for later in the week and he was afraid that it was going to erupt into a shouting match if not a fist fight. I suggested that maybe that meeting would be a good place for some of the ministers of the community to show up. He agreed.
So, on the night of the meeting, ten ministers — catholic and protestant, conservative and liberal, but friends all — entered the hall where the meeting was going to take place. We were all dressed in suits and/or clerics and we came in together just as the meeting was scheduled to take place, filed down the center aisle and seated ourselves, together, on the front row.
I was later told by more than a few people that they could feel the air change in the room as the president of council pounded the gavel and asked one of the pastors to open the meeting with a prayer.
Did everyone suddenly, magically agree with each other? Of course not.
But the tone of the meeting remained civil and respectful throughout the evening. And whenever it threatened to do otherwise one of the ministers would raise a hand and be recognized by the chair and ask a question that would, in the asking, remind us that our Lord called upon us to care about the poor and to love one another.
The first thing Jesus did, and often the first thing we can do when fear has threatened to undo and paralyze those we love, is to just show up.
And, like Jesus, we can show our scars. We can be vulnerable and authentically human.
As a runner in the Boston Marathon the year after that horrible bombing was heard to say, “We aren’t hiding our scars. We’re wearing them proudly because our scars are signs that the thing that tried to kill me failed.”
In his autobiography, Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful, South African writer and political activist Alan Paton tells of his experiences as the founder and president of the anti-apartheid Liberal Party in the 1950s and 60s. Openly opposing apartheid was a dangerous thing to do in those days. People who did so were routinely arrested, tortured, even killed.
One day, a little old black man wearing a large cowboy hat walked into the Liberal Party office and volunteered to help. The staff, worried about his advanced years and his diminutive size, asked him to reconsider. This work could be dangerous, they said. But he insisted on helping.
Asked why he was so determined he answered, “One day I will stand before my maker and he will ask to see my scars. And if I say to him that I have no scars, he will say to me, ‘Why? Was there nothing worth fighting for?’”
The Christian message is not that our lives will be perfect, unencumbered, untroubled, and unchallenged when we become Christians. The Christian message is that even though our lives may be burdened, troubled, challenged and imperfect, even though life may leave us with scars, we will be able, through Jesus Christ, not just to survive those challenges but to thrive in the midst of them. And that the scars that we bear from those challenges will become the very things that give witness to the love and power of God’s grace in our lives.
If we will have faith enough to do that, to show up as authentic human beings, to speak and live the loving grace of Jesus Christ, he has promised that we will not do so alone, that his spirit will be there, with us, to give us strength, courage, and power, even to the end of the age.
Amen.
Oops, almost forgot about Thomas.
The rest of the story is what we learned in Sunday school to call Thomas “Doubting Thomas.” That’s too bad, really, because Thomas is no more a doubter than any of the others.
They have rejected the report of the women who went to the grave. They are not celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. They are not making their way to Galilee to meet him as they were instructed. They are not singing and shouting his name to all who will listen. They are filled with unfaith, cowering and trembling in a cold, dark, locked room.
And even after they have seen his scars with their own eyes and received the spirit directly from him they’re still cowering in that room a week later. So, when Thomas arrives on the scene, he asks for no less than what everyone else has already received. And when Jesus shows him the scars, he is doing no more for Thomas than he did for everyone else.
Thomas sees the scars and believes.
The point of this story is not Thomas’s doubts. His doubts are nothing special. They’re no different from those of the other ten disciples. No, the point of this story is the gifts that Jesus gives to all of them.
They betrayed and denied him in the hour of his need. And even when he had risen from the grave, they could not bring themselves to believe that it was so. When he told them how to respond to his resurrection, they didn’t do it.
But Jesus didn’t give upon on them. He came to them. He showed them his scars. He gave them a mission to do and a Holy Spirit to help them do it. And, finally, they began doing it.
He has done the same for us, you know. All of us. Every single one. He has given us himself, the real antidote to fear. And all we have to do is have faith in him.
Now… Amen.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Finding Our Joy
by Chris Keating
Psalm 16, John 20:19-31
Greg Kata — aka “Mr. Greg” on TikTok — is a an elementary school theater teacher in New Orleans whose brief videos are filled with the often hilarious life reflections of his young students. While he never shows them on camera, Kata makes sure each video is packed with kindergarten-sized antics. In a recent video, he shared how his class spontaneously began singing “Happy Birthday” the day he turned 43. All the kids sang, he noted, except for one little boy who burst into tears. When asked what was wrong, the little boy said, “I just want it to be my birthday.” Another little girl chided the boy: “You’ve got to share. Mr. Greg doesn’t have too many birthdays left.” Kata laughed, and ended the video with his signature sign off, “Find your joy.”
It's not bad advice — and might also have been the sort of thing Jesus told his disciples on Easter.
When last we saw them, the disciples were running back from the empty tomb, breathless and confused. As the hours pass and daylight begins to fade, we find them hunkered down. John, ever mindful of the powerful metaphor of night and day, pencils in the details. Inside that room the shades are drawn and the doors are bolted. The disciples are quivering more than Scooby-Doo in the face of danger. They’re afraid and scared — and not because someone failed to put away the deviled eggs after Easter brunch.
It's still Easter, but joy is nowhere to be found.
As Dean Feldmeyer points out in this week’s main article, the disciples cower in fear, triggered not only by Jesus’ crucifixion, but also by the sudden disappearance of his body. If the dead do not stay put, then what else can happen?
Perhaps the disciples — at least the male ones — should have paid a bit more attention to Mary’s testimony. Mary Magdalene’s earlier encounter with the risen Christ has helped her turn from the shadows of crucifixion into the light of resurrection. Joy Ann McDougall, writing in Theology Today (vol. 69, 2012, pp.166-176) points out that Mary’s encounter with Jesus has released her from the bondage of suffering, offering an invitation to pursuing a life shaped by resurrection. McDougall reflects that while Mary is not yet redeemed from “the chains of guilt,” she is “seemingly (freed) from her shattered hopes and the narrow confines of her expectations.”
She is freed to go and find her joy. Freed to turn away from her agony to embrace deepest happiness. Freed to believe that God has lifted her out of the pit of grief and terror. Apparently, the guys are not quite there yet. Whether they have ignored Mary’s testimony or are too shocked to know what to believe, we do not know. The light of the resurrection has not yet dawned inside that shuttered house.
It’s not hard imagining their struggle to believe. We are, after all, a people of sorrows, who are well-acquainted with grief. This has become a particularly acute problem following the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the customer experience researchers at Oracle, more than 88 percent of persons are looking for experiences that would make them smile and laugh. About 45 percent of persons report that it has been more than two years since they felt true happiness. Some 25 percent say they either don’t know or have forgotten what it means to be truly happy. A vast majority of people surveyed indicated they are willing to pay a premium price for true happiness.
But how exactly how much will you pay to be happy? For the right price, you buy premium access to a Disney theme park that will jump you to front of every line. If airport lines and canceled flights make you sad, turn that frown upside down by renting a private jet for at least $4,000-$8,000 an hour. Didn’t get your invite to King Charles’ coronation? Consider booking your own royal holiday in a private castle in France’s Loire Valley, about $8,000 a night (pool towels are extra). It sleeps 28 and is said to be “Ideal for kids!” according to one travel writer.
Living well is a costly form of revenge, which is one reason why the psalmist reminds us that genuine happiness is grounded in God’s gracious provision. The psalm, part of a collection of psalms expressing trust, understands that joy is not the result of swiping a platinum credit card, but from God. “For you do not give me up to Sheol,” the psalmist muses, foreshadowing the promise of God’s enduring care.
According to Acts, Peter’s sermon on Pentecost draws from Psalm 16. Jesus’ breath has filled him with the confidence and joy he lacked earlier on Easter. Peter has discovered the source of his joy and is now confident that God will not “let your faithful one see the Pit.”
True happiness is not a commodity, but a gift. While we may resonate with some of the feelings reported in the Oracle study, our congregations know that our discontent is weighed down by heavier emotions of fear, grief, and shame. We have been locked behind the shutters of fear and grief for too long. Even on the Second Sunday of Easter, we’re still slow to find our joy.
Yet in those moments the risen Lord finds us. Even in our greatest struggles, we may discover the wisdom of God that comes to us in the night (Psalm 16:7), and for that reason never be moved.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Mary Austin:
John 20:19-31
Defined by Doubt
Poor Thomas gets labeled forever for this one moment when he insists on getting what the other disciples get. We know him by his deficits (if doubt is a failing). Barbara Brown Taylor has a similar complaint about how we talk about people who are spiritual, and yet not affiliated with a church. She says, “I’ve been offended by the category of the nones, N-O-N-E-S, because it sounds like a null set. I don’t know if this is what you’re talking about, but the whole way for many years that people who were embedded in church communities dismissed the spiritual but not religious was being frivolous, non-committed individualists who just wanted to design their own religion. And now, lo-and-behold, it turns out they’re really part of an evolution we’re in the middle of. And I hope we find a word better than “Nones” to describe them, not only because they’re now 30% of the US population.”
Taylor adds, “theologically, I’ve been happy at the edges and I’ve met people at the edges who are so much more interesting to me than people at the center.” Thomas and “the Nones” point us all to something we’re missing in our faith.
* * *
John 20:19-31
The Gift of Unbelievers
After many years as an Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor became a college professor, and she recalls the education that she got from her students. After being immersed in the church for so many years, she was forced to think in new ways. Taylor notes “the great gift of the unbelievers in class.” She says, “The students in my [classes] who distanced themselves from religion often knew more about the faith they had left behind than the students who stayed put without question….the great gift of the unbelievers in class was to send me back to my historic vocabulary list to explore its meaning in the present.” Thomas brings a similar gift to his friends, as he insists on seeing Jesus for himself. People who doubt sharpen our faith — and perhaps their own beliefs.
* * *
Psalm 16, John 20:19-31
Joy Has Scars
Poet and teacher Ross Gay says that we think of joy and pain as separate. In his new book, Inciting Joy, he insists that they belong together. In this week’s texts, the psalmist can only write about joy because he has known pain, and the echoes of past struggles echo through the praise. Thomas’ joy at seeing Jesus is sharper because of his grief.
Ross Gay proposes, “What happens if joy is not separate from pain? What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another? Or even more to the point, what if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things?...
“If it sounds like I’m advocating for sorrow, nope. Besides, sorrow (unlike joy, apparently) doesn’t need an advocate…But what I am advocating, and adamantly so, is that rather than quarantining ourselves or running from sorrow, rather than warring with sorrow, we lay down our swords and invite sorrow in. I’m suggesting we make sorrow some tea from the lemon balm in the garden. We let sorrow wash up and take some of our clothes. We give sorrow our dad’s slippers that we’ve hung on to for fifteen years for just this occasion. And we drape our murdered buddy’s scarf, still smelling of nag champa, over sorrow’s shoulders, to warm them up some.”
Sorrow is joy’s unwelcome twin, and our Easter joy is deeper because we stand on this side of the cross.
* * *
Psalm 16, John 20:19-31
Joy and the Locked Room
On this Sunday, when the people who love Jesus are hidden away in a locked room, they have no idea that resurrection joy is coming their way, in the very person of Jesus. Ross Gay, writing about joy, says that the locked room is where we find joy.
He writes, “this is very important: this sanctuary of joy has a very strong lock (think Tom and Jerry, ten or fifteen latches and deadbolts and chains and the rest) for when heartbreak — which, it should be noted, usually lives in the filthy back corner of the back room of the basement, where the stone walls are always wet and flickering with roaches and the drain with the furry green stuff crawling from it never all the way screws down — gets loose and comes sniffing around the keyhole, throttling the door, trying to get in… Perhaps in the form of your father dead or your mother despondent or your cousin who shot herself in the chest or your buddy stabbed to death or your dutiful and troubled mind or the most beautiful ballplayer you ever coached at last let off the machine or your child who won’t forgive you or you can’t get your medicine or your beloved doggie’s cough won’t stop or the forest you love has been logged or the school shut down or they poisoned the water again or they put a highway through again or another species gone or it’s raining in Greenland or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or . . .”
Thomas and his friends are in the right place.
* * *
Psalm 16
Appreciative Joy
The psalmist is practicing what mindfulness practitioners call “appreciative joy.” This kind of joy is a practice, born or attentiveness to the world. It balances out our tendency to focus on the negative. The psalmist starts with a plea to God for protection, so we know something negative is happening, and then the writer deliberately focuses on joy.
Shalini Bahl-Milne teaches that “The essence of appreciative joy is captured in Mary Oliver’s simple ‘instructions for life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.’ ” In other words, appreciative joy is our ability to notice and delight in all that’s good in the present moment. This may sound simple, but it’s not easy. The kind of joy we tend to chase after usually depends upon circumstances that we may or may not be able to control. By building our capacity for appreciative joy, we can savor the different experiences of joy available to us without getting hooked on the pleasurable feelings, and we can find goodness even in challenging situations. Appreciative joy is a pervasive sense of contentment that we can find within us in moments when we’re free from any kind of restlessness, striving, and resistance.
The term appreciative joy originally comes from Eastern wisdom traditions. To distinguish it from all the other experiences of joy, appreciative joy encompasses our capacity to feel ease, contentment, and gratitude even when things are not going exactly the way we want them to. Further, appreciative joy includes our ability to delight in others’ good qualities and happiness.”
The psalmist recalls the past, saying, “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage.” Then the writer focuses on God in the present, “I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” We can hear the spiritual determination in these ancient words, and make the same joy our own.
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From team member Elena Delhagen:
John 20:19-31
Different lenses
I’m not one who is really into photography, but I have several friends who are. They all tell me that a 50mm lens on a full frame camera is the closest anyone can get to the human field of view. The center of the human field of vision, where we pick up most of our visual information, has a 40-60 degree angle of view. A 50mm lens has a 46 degree angle of view.
Yet our sense of sight is so much more than a central field, isn’t it? Our retinas are curved, and they contain approximately 130 million cells. Our eyes are constantly moving, allowing us to pick up things in our peripheral vision. They adjust automatically to light, allowing us to see things that are muted and shadowy as well as bright and vibrant. Yet a camera sensor is flat, which means the pixel density is even. Even the best camera lens in the world cannot come close to mimicking actual sight.
To see something — to really see it, in all its complexity and depth and color and light — is an absolute miracle, when you think about it.
That is why we can’t really fault Thomas for wanting to see Christ’s nail marks, to watch his own fingers touch the wounds of Jesus’ hands and side. The other disciples, one could say, had seen Jesus through a 50mm camera lens, but Thomas wanted more. He wasn’t satisfied with good — he wanted the best. He didn’t want artificial sight but, instead, craved the real deal.
* * *
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Bearing witness
The week before Easter, the world watched as former US President, Donald Trump, entered a Manhattan courthouse to be arraigned on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection to $130,000 in hush-money payments to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels. His indictment has been described as “historic” and “unprecedented,” and audiences across the globe are able to witness it thanks to modern technology.
Being a witness to something is both a gift and a responsibility. As witnesses, we get to see things unfolding with our own eyes, things that others, perhaps, are not privy to. Yet witnesses also have a responsibility. Think of witnesses who are called to testify in a court of law. They’ve seen something, and their responsibility is to tell the truth about it so others may know, too.
In today’s reading from Acts, Peter bears witness to God’s salvation story for humanity, begun in the Hebrew Bible and evidenced through Jesus and the apostles’ witness to his resurrection. They witnessed the unimaginable, but that gift was not to be kept to themselves; they were called to tell others about it. Likewise, we all have witnessed the resurrected Christ at work in our own lives — so who are we telling about it?
* * *
Psalm 16
Show and tell
Psalm 16 is a beautiful bridge between God’s salvation story as told in the Hebrew Bible that continues through Jesus and the ministry of the apostles, as it is referenced in Peter’s speech from our Acts reading today. It is recited by Jewish people both individually and collectively as an offering of praise and thanksgiving to YHWH. Verse 8 is so important to the Jewish faith that it is written in most synagogues, above the Hekhal, the Torah Ark, and is visible to all those present at the time of prayers.
This brings up, again, the common theme in this week’s lectionary readings: Seeing. For Jews, this verse is so significant it is often viewed as the maxim of their faith and, as such, it is placed in prominent places where all can see it. We humans elevate what we love, don’t we? Think of photographs on our mantles, certificates hanging on our walls, trophies displayed on our tables or bookcases. We show them off because we want to see them — and we want others to see them, too, so they know what we’re all about. So, where are we displaying our faith so that others can see it? Hopefully we don’t relegate it solely to a cross on our wall in the privacy of our own homes. Our faith ought to be displayed in our communities, in our workplaces, amongst all those we come into contact with. We ought to want other people to know just exactly what it is we’re all about.
* * *
1 Peter 1:3-9
Gold medals in suffering?
I’ve always found the verses about suffering in this passage of 1 Peter to be a little…out of place. In the midst of exhortations about new birth and living hope, we are also reminded that life, for all of us, also brings suffering. This is a fact that makes us deeply uncomfortable.
Kate Bowler — author, speaker, assistant professor at Duke Divinity School, and cancer patient — says that “the idea that suffering is always rewarded is deeply rooted in both Christian and American values.” We are unable to reconcile the cruel reality of suffering with our understanding of a good, benevolent God, so we are quick to dismiss suffering (our own or others’) or gloss over it to remind us all that some kind of reward must be coming from it. It even appears here that Peter is saying suffering is necessary in order for us to have genuine faith (vv. 6-7)!
But perhaps that’s not really what Peter means. Rather, what he seems to be talking about is the strength of our faith that is often revealed most when we are suffering. Just like fire reveals the beauty of gold, suffering can reveal the beauty of our faith. When we are facing trials, we rely on God in a whole different way than we do when all is going well.
I once heard a pastor say that a better way to think of Jesus’ “blessed are…” exhortations in the Beatitudes is as “close to God are…” “Blessed” has such a strange connotation in our faith vocabularies, and such language can portray the idea that God actually wants us to suffer.
But what if we shift the words a bit? “Close to God are those who mourn. Close to God are those poor in spirit. Close to God are the hungry and thirsty.” In our suffering, we are close to God, and that is precisely the beauty, reward, and salvation for our souls that Peter is talking about here.
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From team member Katy Stenta:
John 20:19-31
Proof of Life
Thomas the Brave is such an understandable soul, not only is he the only one who is not hiding in a room when Jesus comes to greet the disciples, but he needs to see the actual living Jesus Christ in order to understand that he is alive. Thomas is so human in this moment. Do we not all wish to see proof of life of our beloved ones when we have not seen them (and have been concerned about them) for a while? Even more so, it puts me in the mind of my very concrete thinking child with autism. He will ask abrupt and blunt questions all the time. He is not shy to ask people with white hair “Are you old?” and had trouble believing, until we showed him, the body of our beloved deceased cat Lark. “She’s dead, really? No…you are joking.” Sometimes it’s nice to have my child blurt out the obvious questions because we humans are all wondering, “Is this true? Is this real?” But we are scared to ask what we are all wondering. Remember, Jesus has to eat food in front of the disciples, repeatedly, to prove he is not a ghost. So, the rest of the disciples are no different than Thomas is, he is just the one brave enough to say that he won’t believe it until he touches Jesus’ wounds himself. (I still think that instead of touching his wounds, Thomas gives Jesus a big hug instead.)
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1 Peter 1:3-9
The two Justins being ousted in Tennessee and the continuing shootings in the United States, particularly during Holy Week, are showing how justice and the idea of resurrection and the very life-giving practices of humanity are being tested in the United States. However, we keep the faith, for we know what is ultimately promised. Even though victory seems impossible, we know the work is worthy, and that good will ultimately win.
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Psalm 16
It is easy to feel weary these days. When feeling overwhelmed, it’s good to remember that we do not give up on God, because God does not give up on us. It is easy, in the slump of post-Easter, to feel like that the resurrection work has been done or perhaps that God has already done all the work that is to be done. In a world where pastors, churches, congregations, everything seems to be burning out — it is important to remember to rest in the Lord. The fullness of God’s joy is in the refreshing of spring. Thus, with Earth Day, Easter, and spring: here is the encouraging news about the environment for 2023.
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WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship
One: Protect us, O God, for in you we take refuge.
All: You are our God; we have no good apart from you.
One: Let us bless our God who gives us counsel.
All: We will keep the Holy One always before us.
One: God shows us the path of life, even life eternal.
All: In God’s presence we are filled with abundant joy.
OR
One: God comes to us in the power of the resurrection.
All: Praise be to God who brings life out of death.
One: God comes to calm our fears and stand with us.
All: We rejoice in the loving presence of our God.
One: In God there is life, joyful and abundant.
All: We will let go of our fears and embrace God’s joy.
Hymns and Songs
The Strife Is O’er, the Battle Done
UMH: 306
PH: 119
GTG: 236
AAHH: 277
NCH: 242
CH: 221
LBW: 135
W&P: 290
AMEC: 162
Christ Is Risen
UMH: 307
PH: 104
GTG: 248
CH: 222
ELW: 383
Thine Be the Glory
UMH: 308
PH: 122
GTG: 238
NCH: 253
CH: 218
LBW: 145
ELW: 376
W&P: 310
AMEC: 157
He Lives
UMH: 310
AAHH: 275
NNBH: 119
CH: 226
W&P: 302
Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain
UMH: 315
H82: 199/200
PH: 114/115
NCH: 230
CH: 215
LBW: 132
ELW: 363
Come, We That Love the lord
UMH: 732/733
H82: 392
AAHH: 590
NNBH: 367
NCH: 379/382
CH: 707
ELW: 625
W&P: 67
AMEC: 520
Rejoice, the Lord Is King
UMH: 715/716
H82: 481
PH: 155
GTG: 363
NCH: 303
CH: 699
LBW: 171
ELW: 430
W&P: 342
AMEC: 88/89
He Touched Me
UMH: 367
AAHH: 273
NNBH: 147
CH: 564
AMEC: 402
Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart
UMH: 160/161
H82: 556/557
PH: 145/146
GTG: 804
AAHH: 537
NNBH: 7
NCH: 55/71
CH: 15
LBW: 553
ELW: 873/874
W&P: 113
AMEC: 8
I Come with Joy
UMH: 617
H82: 304
PH: 507
NCH: 349
CH: 420
ELW: 482
W&P: 706
Renew: 195
God, You Are My God
CCB: 60
The Steadfast Love of the Lord
CCB: 28
Renew: 23
Music Resources Key
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
GTG: Glory to God, The Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who comes to dispel our fear and fill us with joy:
Grant us the faith to trust that we can rely on you
to hold us in your gracious love for ever and ever;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you dispel our fears and you fill us with your joy. You are gracious in bestowing your love upon all of creation. Help us to trust you to always hold us in your love, now and forevermore. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially when our lack of faith leads us to succumb to our fears.
All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have proven yourself faithful time and again and yet we doubt your love. We allow the things around us to overwhelm us and to cause us to lose our trust in you. We rely too much on our own strength and not enough on yours. Forgive us and renew your Spirit within us that we might truly be faithful disciples of your Christ. Amen.
One: God is gracious and loving and offers us peace. Receive God’s grace and share the news of God’s faithful care to all.
Prayers of the People
Praise and glorious is your name, O God of faithfulness and truth. We offer you our worship because you have always been our loving God.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have proven yourself faithful time and again and yet we doubt your love. We allow the things around us to overwhelm us and to cause us to lose our trust in you. We rely too much on our own strength and not enough on yours. Forgive us and renew your Spirit within us that we might truly be faithful disciples of your Christ.
We give you thanks for all the ways in which you show your trustworthy love for us and for all creation. We thank you for the rising and setting of the sun and the changing of the seasons. We thank you for the constant cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth that is reflected in all that you created. We thank you for those who have shown us your love in their care for us. We thank you for Jesus who died and rose for our sake.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all your people in their need. We pray for those who struggle with fear and those who think joy will never come their way. We pray for those who suffer, those who are dying, and those who are grieving. We pray for those who work to alleviate that suffering of others and to bring healing and joy.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
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CHILDREN'S SERMON
Defending the Doubter
by Tom Willadsen
John 20:19-31
Today’s gospel passage, like many in John’s gospel, refers to “the Jews” in a negative light. Everyone in today’s passage is Jewish. Jesus’ disciples are gathered together because they are afraid of the Jewish leaders, not themselves. John’s gospel was written in a time of profound division within Judaism about Jesus’ identity. Was he the Messiah? A powerful, charismatic leader? A corrupter of the faith? A serial Sabbath violator? John’s gospel comes from a specific perspective within Judaism, but read carelessly it can be used to re-sow the seeds of anti-Semitism.
After the little ones have gathered, ask them what they are afraid of. Be prepared for things like older siblings and “getting caught” and the anger of parents. Have some suggestions to get them thinking. In my case that would be spinny rides and tornadoes. I am proud of my consistency, or perhaps loyalty — I’ve been afraid of spinny rides and tornadoes more than 50 years!
Ask the kids what they do when they’re afraid, or when they’re confronted by the things they’re afraid of. In my case, I don’t get on spinny rides and I go to the basement when there’s a tornado warning.
Ask the little ones if they knew that Jesus’ closest followers were afraid. When Jesus was dying on the cross they ran away. After he died they gathered together because they were afraid of the people who did not follow Jesus and had plotted to kill him.
Even after Jesus had appeared to them, after he had risen from the dead, his closest friends were still afraid. They told Thomas that they had seen Jesus alive again. They were very excited, but still afraid. Thomas said that he had to see Jesus alive again with his own eyes.
Right then, Jesus appeared to the disciples, even though they were in a locked room all alone. Jesus showed Thomas the wounds he had from when he was crucified — and Thomas believed that Jesus had risen from the dead!
After that, all the disciples were not as afraid anymore. They were all able to leave the place they went to out of fear.
Jesus knows when we are afraid. Jesus understands when we are afraid. But that doesn’t mean you have to go on a spinny ride if you don’t want to.
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The Immediate Word, April 16, 2023 issue.
Copyright 2023 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
- The Antidote to Fear by Dean Feldmeyer — The antidote to fear isn’t courage, it’s faith.
- Second Thoughts: Finding Our Joy by Chris Keating based on Psalm 16 and John 20:19-31.
- Sermon illustrations by Mary Austin, Elena Delhagen, Katy Stenta.
- Worship resources by George Reed.
- Children's sermon: Defending the Doubter by Tom Willadsen based on John 20:19-31.
The Antidote to Fearby Dean Feldmeyer
John 20:19-31
I’m afraid of bees. Not just bees. Anything that stings. Wasps. Hornets. Honey bees. Yellow Jackets. You name it, I’m terrified of it. Honest. 71-year-old, 6’4,” 250 pound male and I’m afraid of little bugs. It’s embarrassing.
It all goes back to a childhood trauma that’s too complicated to relate here, but is, most certainly, the cause. I know it’s irrational. I have, after all, been stung dozens of times and survived just fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that stinging insects are “fear triggers” for me. I see one and the adrenaline surges, my heart starts to race, and a fight or flight response kicks in, big time.
We all have fear triggers, things that ignite the fear response in us and set off the fight or flight instinct, and politicians are experts at pulling those triggers:
Woke. Fascist. Liberal. Radical. Activist. Socialist. Pedophile. Assault on. War on. Family values. Racist. Conspiracy. Religious freedom. Pro-life.
Hurl one of those words or phrases in a conversation and you can sense the fight or flight hackles go up in the people around you. Liberal or conservative. It doesn’t matter. Fear works the same. It sends us into a frenzy of attacks, or it paralyzes us.
In this Sunday’s gospel lesson, we find the disciples cowering in a locked room, paralyzed by fear when Jesus shows up and offers them the antidote that sets them free.
In the News
“Is your furnace endangering the lives of your family? A special report, Thursday night at eleven.” The local newscast uses a fear trigger to get us to watch their Thursday night broadcast. (Until, then, I guess you just take your chances.) And we probably do watch because fear is a powerful motivator.
Commercials convince us that we’re getting old and our faces are going to look like relief maps of the South Dakota Badlands if we don’t use their wrinkle remover. Ads for automobile, tire, and brake companies all remind us that the safety of our families is riding on their product.
But the grand prize winners, our most accomplished, professional fear mongers are politicians and the people who run their election campaigns.
“My opponent is a radical, left wing, socialist who hates America and wants to destroy our country.” Sound farfetched? Maybe, but lots of people take that kind of fear trigger seriously and vote accordingly. Fear triggers come from all sides of the political spectrum: She’s a baby killer. He’s a fascist. She’s a left wing, socialist radical. He’s a misogynistic, racist, bully. See how it works? The accusation alone is enough to ignite fear and loathing in the targeted group.
As primary election season draws nearer this spring, we’re going to be experiencing a lot of attempts by those running for office to pull our fear triggers and exploit the fears they ignite.
Says the American Psychological Association, “Fear can sway opinions, but knowing the deliberate and strategic ways in which our fears are exploited can help lessen its effects.” According to their studies, messages that trigger fear in the listener are twice as effective as messages without fear. Fear messages generally attempt to drive people to find perceived safety by being part of a group who think and fear the same things they do. The savvy politicians convince those scared voters that he/she is the best person to address the issue at hand.
Besides motivating people to act in specific ways, fear can also be used to keep people from acting.
In addition to driving votes, fear is also used to diminish voter turnout. According to The Journal of Politics, raising anxiety around an election or candidate is a tactic often used to decrease voter turnout among an opponent’s supporters (The Journal of Politics, Vol. 73, No. 1, 2011; Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 66, No. 2, 2013).
Knowing that our fear triggers are being pulled is one way to avoid being manipulated by those who exploit our fears, but sometimes it isn’t enough. Sometimes knowing I’m being intentionally and strategically scared isn’t enough to keep me from being scared.
The question we must address is the question of fear itself. To paraphrase FDR, “The main thing we have to fear is fear itself.” And in this week’s New Testament lesson, Jesus offers an antidote to fear itself.
In the Scripture
There they are, ten of the eleven remaining disciples, crowded into a room, lights dimmed, doors locked. They’re afraid. Afraid of the temple officials who conspired to have Jesus executed by the Romans.
They don’t know what to do.
Oh, they heard the report of the women but, depending on which gospel account you read, they have either dismissed it out of hand as foolishness or they just don’t know whether to believe it or not. And, even if they do believe it, well, they’re scared. Scared for their lives.
Now, six things happen in rapid succession that are intended to mitigate the fear of the disciples.
One, Jesus shows up. Literally, he “came and stood among them.”
There are some people who, just by showing up, can change the air pressure in the room. Some people do that in a negative way. They show up and you can feel the oxygen, the energy, the life being sucked out of the room the instant they arrive.
But more common, I think, are those people who affect the room positively with their presence. They enter the room and suddenly it’s as if a light that no one knew was there has been turned on. The room seems suddenly brighter, the air lighter, the energy enhanced. The room is, itself, not changed. But everything in it is transformed just by the appearance of this one person.
Jesus was like that. His mere presence transformed a room. The fact that he had been dead less than 24 hours ago, that the women had reported seeing him alive in the garden, that several of his disciples had reported that his tomb was empty — all of these things — contributed to the power of his presence on this particular evening, but it was a presence that would have been notable and powerful even without those added attributes.
Jesus just had to show up to make a difference.
The second thing Jesus does in the story is greet them with a blessing of peace, which fulfills a promise he has made in an earlier chapter to give them peace. This is not peace as we know it — an absence of conflict — this is shalom, that general sense of well-being, of balance, of harmony and good will.
According to the gospel, the opposite of fear is not courage but peace, shalom. Peace is the opposite of fear, the cure for despair, and the appropriate response to doubt and shame.
When we are infused with adrenaline, when our hearts are slamming against our chests, when we jump at every sound, when we are hiding from things we can’t even name, when terror grips us, when doubt ensnares us, when everything we believed in seems smashed and destroyed, Jesus offers us…peace, shalom.
Then he reinforces his message with his own personal witness.
The third thing he does is show them his scars.
He didn’t have to. He’s Jesus, after all. He could have come to them without scars, without wounds of any kind. He could have come to them whole and smiling and filled with a reassurance that suffering and pain are mere illusions. But he does not. He comes to them with scars.
Suffering, pain, even death, are real.
The promise of Jesus Christ is not that these things don’t exist. His promise is that they do exist but that they can be overcome. Scars are not evidence of failure but of victory.
Fourth, having given them the gift of authenticity, he reiterates the gift of peace. Our peace is drawn not from some empty promise, some well-turned phrase, some bit of colloquial Christian jargon. It is, rather, drawn from real life, lived authentically in the midst of real trouble and real turmoil. Our peace is based on a real life well lived.
The fifth thing Jesus does is to commission them. He sends them. He gives them a job to do, a mission.
It is important to note, here, that Jesus does not give his followers — then or now — a gift simply for the sake of the gift. The gift is always given with a purpose. This peace we have been given is not to be held closely and guarded. It is not to be horded and enjoyed for its own sake. It is to be used.
The use to which it is to be put is that of forgiveness.
The calling of the disciples, the commission that is given to us in this story, is the commission of grace. It is our job to continue the work that Jesus began in announcing God’s unending, unrestricted, unconditional love.
We are to be those who announce to the world that you are accepted, your sins are forgiven, your past is approved and your future is open. That God loves and accepts you just the way you are.
If we don’t do it, it won’t get done. The success of the gospel rests upon our shoulders, brothers and sisters.
But not ours alone.
Jesus does one more thing before he departs — one sixth thing. He reminds them of the gift that is God’s Holy spirit and he symbolizes that gift by breathing on them. (In New Testament Greek, the word for spirit and breath is the same word.)
Wherever we go, when we go to do the work of the gospel, to spread through word and deed the good news of God’s grace and acceptance to all of God’s people, then the Holy Spirit of God goes with us, enabling and empowering us to embody God’s love and share it with others.
In the Sermon
There is power in showing up. I think we often give ourselves too little credit. The fact of the matter is that our presence, our mere presence, has power. Where we decide to show up and when and under what circumstances has a great deal of influence.
Some years ago, the county I lived in was contemplating building some low-income apartments near the city limits of the village where we lived. Before any facts were known the debate had already become heated and offensive. Personal barbs were being exchanged, accusations and insults were being thrown around, feelings were getting hurt and a pall was being cast over the entire community.
I was chatting with a member of city council one day as he commiserated with me about the tenor and tone of the discussions that were taking place. A town hall meeting had been scheduled for later in the week and he was afraid that it was going to erupt into a shouting match if not a fist fight. I suggested that maybe that meeting would be a good place for some of the ministers of the community to show up. He agreed.
So, on the night of the meeting, ten ministers — catholic and protestant, conservative and liberal, but friends all — entered the hall where the meeting was going to take place. We were all dressed in suits and/or clerics and we came in together just as the meeting was scheduled to take place, filed down the center aisle and seated ourselves, together, on the front row.
I was later told by more than a few people that they could feel the air change in the room as the president of council pounded the gavel and asked one of the pastors to open the meeting with a prayer.
Did everyone suddenly, magically agree with each other? Of course not.
But the tone of the meeting remained civil and respectful throughout the evening. And whenever it threatened to do otherwise one of the ministers would raise a hand and be recognized by the chair and ask a question that would, in the asking, remind us that our Lord called upon us to care about the poor and to love one another.
The first thing Jesus did, and often the first thing we can do when fear has threatened to undo and paralyze those we love, is to just show up.
And, like Jesus, we can show our scars. We can be vulnerable and authentically human.
As a runner in the Boston Marathon the year after that horrible bombing was heard to say, “We aren’t hiding our scars. We’re wearing them proudly because our scars are signs that the thing that tried to kill me failed.”
In his autobiography, Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful, South African writer and political activist Alan Paton tells of his experiences as the founder and president of the anti-apartheid Liberal Party in the 1950s and 60s. Openly opposing apartheid was a dangerous thing to do in those days. People who did so were routinely arrested, tortured, even killed.
One day, a little old black man wearing a large cowboy hat walked into the Liberal Party office and volunteered to help. The staff, worried about his advanced years and his diminutive size, asked him to reconsider. This work could be dangerous, they said. But he insisted on helping.
Asked why he was so determined he answered, “One day I will stand before my maker and he will ask to see my scars. And if I say to him that I have no scars, he will say to me, ‘Why? Was there nothing worth fighting for?’”
The Christian message is not that our lives will be perfect, unencumbered, untroubled, and unchallenged when we become Christians. The Christian message is that even though our lives may be burdened, troubled, challenged and imperfect, even though life may leave us with scars, we will be able, through Jesus Christ, not just to survive those challenges but to thrive in the midst of them. And that the scars that we bear from those challenges will become the very things that give witness to the love and power of God’s grace in our lives.
If we will have faith enough to do that, to show up as authentic human beings, to speak and live the loving grace of Jesus Christ, he has promised that we will not do so alone, that his spirit will be there, with us, to give us strength, courage, and power, even to the end of the age.
Amen.
Oops, almost forgot about Thomas.
The rest of the story is what we learned in Sunday school to call Thomas “Doubting Thomas.” That’s too bad, really, because Thomas is no more a doubter than any of the others.
They have rejected the report of the women who went to the grave. They are not celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. They are not making their way to Galilee to meet him as they were instructed. They are not singing and shouting his name to all who will listen. They are filled with unfaith, cowering and trembling in a cold, dark, locked room.
And even after they have seen his scars with their own eyes and received the spirit directly from him they’re still cowering in that room a week later. So, when Thomas arrives on the scene, he asks for no less than what everyone else has already received. And when Jesus shows him the scars, he is doing no more for Thomas than he did for everyone else.
Thomas sees the scars and believes.
The point of this story is not Thomas’s doubts. His doubts are nothing special. They’re no different from those of the other ten disciples. No, the point of this story is the gifts that Jesus gives to all of them.
They betrayed and denied him in the hour of his need. And even when he had risen from the grave, they could not bring themselves to believe that it was so. When he told them how to respond to his resurrection, they didn’t do it.
But Jesus didn’t give upon on them. He came to them. He showed them his scars. He gave them a mission to do and a Holy Spirit to help them do it. And, finally, they began doing it.
He has done the same for us, you know. All of us. Every single one. He has given us himself, the real antidote to fear. And all we have to do is have faith in him.
Now… Amen.
SECOND THOUGHTSFinding Our Joy
by Chris Keating
Psalm 16, John 20:19-31
Greg Kata — aka “Mr. Greg” on TikTok — is a an elementary school theater teacher in New Orleans whose brief videos are filled with the often hilarious life reflections of his young students. While he never shows them on camera, Kata makes sure each video is packed with kindergarten-sized antics. In a recent video, he shared how his class spontaneously began singing “Happy Birthday” the day he turned 43. All the kids sang, he noted, except for one little boy who burst into tears. When asked what was wrong, the little boy said, “I just want it to be my birthday.” Another little girl chided the boy: “You’ve got to share. Mr. Greg doesn’t have too many birthdays left.” Kata laughed, and ended the video with his signature sign off, “Find your joy.”
It's not bad advice — and might also have been the sort of thing Jesus told his disciples on Easter.
When last we saw them, the disciples were running back from the empty tomb, breathless and confused. As the hours pass and daylight begins to fade, we find them hunkered down. John, ever mindful of the powerful metaphor of night and day, pencils in the details. Inside that room the shades are drawn and the doors are bolted. The disciples are quivering more than Scooby-Doo in the face of danger. They’re afraid and scared — and not because someone failed to put away the deviled eggs after Easter brunch.
It's still Easter, but joy is nowhere to be found.
As Dean Feldmeyer points out in this week’s main article, the disciples cower in fear, triggered not only by Jesus’ crucifixion, but also by the sudden disappearance of his body. If the dead do not stay put, then what else can happen?
Perhaps the disciples — at least the male ones — should have paid a bit more attention to Mary’s testimony. Mary Magdalene’s earlier encounter with the risen Christ has helped her turn from the shadows of crucifixion into the light of resurrection. Joy Ann McDougall, writing in Theology Today (vol. 69, 2012, pp.166-176) points out that Mary’s encounter with Jesus has released her from the bondage of suffering, offering an invitation to pursuing a life shaped by resurrection. McDougall reflects that while Mary is not yet redeemed from “the chains of guilt,” she is “seemingly (freed) from her shattered hopes and the narrow confines of her expectations.”
She is freed to go and find her joy. Freed to turn away from her agony to embrace deepest happiness. Freed to believe that God has lifted her out of the pit of grief and terror. Apparently, the guys are not quite there yet. Whether they have ignored Mary’s testimony or are too shocked to know what to believe, we do not know. The light of the resurrection has not yet dawned inside that shuttered house.
It’s not hard imagining their struggle to believe. We are, after all, a people of sorrows, who are well-acquainted with grief. This has become a particularly acute problem following the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the customer experience researchers at Oracle, more than 88 percent of persons are looking for experiences that would make them smile and laugh. About 45 percent of persons report that it has been more than two years since they felt true happiness. Some 25 percent say they either don’t know or have forgotten what it means to be truly happy. A vast majority of people surveyed indicated they are willing to pay a premium price for true happiness.
But how exactly how much will you pay to be happy? For the right price, you buy premium access to a Disney theme park that will jump you to front of every line. If airport lines and canceled flights make you sad, turn that frown upside down by renting a private jet for at least $4,000-$8,000 an hour. Didn’t get your invite to King Charles’ coronation? Consider booking your own royal holiday in a private castle in France’s Loire Valley, about $8,000 a night (pool towels are extra). It sleeps 28 and is said to be “Ideal for kids!” according to one travel writer.
Living well is a costly form of revenge, which is one reason why the psalmist reminds us that genuine happiness is grounded in God’s gracious provision. The psalm, part of a collection of psalms expressing trust, understands that joy is not the result of swiping a platinum credit card, but from God. “For you do not give me up to Sheol,” the psalmist muses, foreshadowing the promise of God’s enduring care.
According to Acts, Peter’s sermon on Pentecost draws from Psalm 16. Jesus’ breath has filled him with the confidence and joy he lacked earlier on Easter. Peter has discovered the source of his joy and is now confident that God will not “let your faithful one see the Pit.”
True happiness is not a commodity, but a gift. While we may resonate with some of the feelings reported in the Oracle study, our congregations know that our discontent is weighed down by heavier emotions of fear, grief, and shame. We have been locked behind the shutters of fear and grief for too long. Even on the Second Sunday of Easter, we’re still slow to find our joy.
Yet in those moments the risen Lord finds us. Even in our greatest struggles, we may discover the wisdom of God that comes to us in the night (Psalm 16:7), and for that reason never be moved.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Mary Austin:John 20:19-31
Defined by Doubt
Poor Thomas gets labeled forever for this one moment when he insists on getting what the other disciples get. We know him by his deficits (if doubt is a failing). Barbara Brown Taylor has a similar complaint about how we talk about people who are spiritual, and yet not affiliated with a church. She says, “I’ve been offended by the category of the nones, N-O-N-E-S, because it sounds like a null set. I don’t know if this is what you’re talking about, but the whole way for many years that people who were embedded in church communities dismissed the spiritual but not religious was being frivolous, non-committed individualists who just wanted to design their own religion. And now, lo-and-behold, it turns out they’re really part of an evolution we’re in the middle of. And I hope we find a word better than “Nones” to describe them, not only because they’re now 30% of the US population.”
Taylor adds, “theologically, I’ve been happy at the edges and I’ve met people at the edges who are so much more interesting to me than people at the center.” Thomas and “the Nones” point us all to something we’re missing in our faith.
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John 20:19-31
The Gift of Unbelievers
After many years as an Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor became a college professor, and she recalls the education that she got from her students. After being immersed in the church for so many years, she was forced to think in new ways. Taylor notes “the great gift of the unbelievers in class.” She says, “The students in my [classes] who distanced themselves from religion often knew more about the faith they had left behind than the students who stayed put without question….the great gift of the unbelievers in class was to send me back to my historic vocabulary list to explore its meaning in the present.” Thomas brings a similar gift to his friends, as he insists on seeing Jesus for himself. People who doubt sharpen our faith — and perhaps their own beliefs.
* * *
Psalm 16, John 20:19-31
Joy Has Scars
Poet and teacher Ross Gay says that we think of joy and pain as separate. In his new book, Inciting Joy, he insists that they belong together. In this week’s texts, the psalmist can only write about joy because he has known pain, and the echoes of past struggles echo through the praise. Thomas’ joy at seeing Jesus is sharper because of his grief.
Ross Gay proposes, “What happens if joy is not separate from pain? What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another? Or even more to the point, what if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things?...
“If it sounds like I’m advocating for sorrow, nope. Besides, sorrow (unlike joy, apparently) doesn’t need an advocate…But what I am advocating, and adamantly so, is that rather than quarantining ourselves or running from sorrow, rather than warring with sorrow, we lay down our swords and invite sorrow in. I’m suggesting we make sorrow some tea from the lemon balm in the garden. We let sorrow wash up and take some of our clothes. We give sorrow our dad’s slippers that we’ve hung on to for fifteen years for just this occasion. And we drape our murdered buddy’s scarf, still smelling of nag champa, over sorrow’s shoulders, to warm them up some.”
Sorrow is joy’s unwelcome twin, and our Easter joy is deeper because we stand on this side of the cross.
* * *
Psalm 16, John 20:19-31
Joy and the Locked Room
On this Sunday, when the people who love Jesus are hidden away in a locked room, they have no idea that resurrection joy is coming their way, in the very person of Jesus. Ross Gay, writing about joy, says that the locked room is where we find joy.
He writes, “this is very important: this sanctuary of joy has a very strong lock (think Tom and Jerry, ten or fifteen latches and deadbolts and chains and the rest) for when heartbreak — which, it should be noted, usually lives in the filthy back corner of the back room of the basement, where the stone walls are always wet and flickering with roaches and the drain with the furry green stuff crawling from it never all the way screws down — gets loose and comes sniffing around the keyhole, throttling the door, trying to get in… Perhaps in the form of your father dead or your mother despondent or your cousin who shot herself in the chest or your buddy stabbed to death or your dutiful and troubled mind or the most beautiful ballplayer you ever coached at last let off the machine or your child who won’t forgive you or you can’t get your medicine or your beloved doggie’s cough won’t stop or the forest you love has been logged or the school shut down or they poisoned the water again or they put a highway through again or another species gone or it’s raining in Greenland or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or . . .”
Thomas and his friends are in the right place.
* * *
Psalm 16
Appreciative Joy
The psalmist is practicing what mindfulness practitioners call “appreciative joy.” This kind of joy is a practice, born or attentiveness to the world. It balances out our tendency to focus on the negative. The psalmist starts with a plea to God for protection, so we know something negative is happening, and then the writer deliberately focuses on joy.
Shalini Bahl-Milne teaches that “The essence of appreciative joy is captured in Mary Oliver’s simple ‘instructions for life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.’ ” In other words, appreciative joy is our ability to notice and delight in all that’s good in the present moment. This may sound simple, but it’s not easy. The kind of joy we tend to chase after usually depends upon circumstances that we may or may not be able to control. By building our capacity for appreciative joy, we can savor the different experiences of joy available to us without getting hooked on the pleasurable feelings, and we can find goodness even in challenging situations. Appreciative joy is a pervasive sense of contentment that we can find within us in moments when we’re free from any kind of restlessness, striving, and resistance.
The term appreciative joy originally comes from Eastern wisdom traditions. To distinguish it from all the other experiences of joy, appreciative joy encompasses our capacity to feel ease, contentment, and gratitude even when things are not going exactly the way we want them to. Further, appreciative joy includes our ability to delight in others’ good qualities and happiness.”
The psalmist recalls the past, saying, “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage.” Then the writer focuses on God in the present, “I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” We can hear the spiritual determination in these ancient words, and make the same joy our own.
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From team member Elena Delhagen:John 20:19-31
Different lenses
I’m not one who is really into photography, but I have several friends who are. They all tell me that a 50mm lens on a full frame camera is the closest anyone can get to the human field of view. The center of the human field of vision, where we pick up most of our visual information, has a 40-60 degree angle of view. A 50mm lens has a 46 degree angle of view.
Yet our sense of sight is so much more than a central field, isn’t it? Our retinas are curved, and they contain approximately 130 million cells. Our eyes are constantly moving, allowing us to pick up things in our peripheral vision. They adjust automatically to light, allowing us to see things that are muted and shadowy as well as bright and vibrant. Yet a camera sensor is flat, which means the pixel density is even. Even the best camera lens in the world cannot come close to mimicking actual sight.
To see something — to really see it, in all its complexity and depth and color and light — is an absolute miracle, when you think about it.
That is why we can’t really fault Thomas for wanting to see Christ’s nail marks, to watch his own fingers touch the wounds of Jesus’ hands and side. The other disciples, one could say, had seen Jesus through a 50mm camera lens, but Thomas wanted more. He wasn’t satisfied with good — he wanted the best. He didn’t want artificial sight but, instead, craved the real deal.
* * *
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Bearing witness
The week before Easter, the world watched as former US President, Donald Trump, entered a Manhattan courthouse to be arraigned on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection to $130,000 in hush-money payments to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels. His indictment has been described as “historic” and “unprecedented,” and audiences across the globe are able to witness it thanks to modern technology.
Being a witness to something is both a gift and a responsibility. As witnesses, we get to see things unfolding with our own eyes, things that others, perhaps, are not privy to. Yet witnesses also have a responsibility. Think of witnesses who are called to testify in a court of law. They’ve seen something, and their responsibility is to tell the truth about it so others may know, too.
In today’s reading from Acts, Peter bears witness to God’s salvation story for humanity, begun in the Hebrew Bible and evidenced through Jesus and the apostles’ witness to his resurrection. They witnessed the unimaginable, but that gift was not to be kept to themselves; they were called to tell others about it. Likewise, we all have witnessed the resurrected Christ at work in our own lives — so who are we telling about it?
* * *
Psalm 16
Show and tell
Psalm 16 is a beautiful bridge between God’s salvation story as told in the Hebrew Bible that continues through Jesus and the ministry of the apostles, as it is referenced in Peter’s speech from our Acts reading today. It is recited by Jewish people both individually and collectively as an offering of praise and thanksgiving to YHWH. Verse 8 is so important to the Jewish faith that it is written in most synagogues, above the Hekhal, the Torah Ark, and is visible to all those present at the time of prayers.
This brings up, again, the common theme in this week’s lectionary readings: Seeing. For Jews, this verse is so significant it is often viewed as the maxim of their faith and, as such, it is placed in prominent places where all can see it. We humans elevate what we love, don’t we? Think of photographs on our mantles, certificates hanging on our walls, trophies displayed on our tables or bookcases. We show them off because we want to see them — and we want others to see them, too, so they know what we’re all about. So, where are we displaying our faith so that others can see it? Hopefully we don’t relegate it solely to a cross on our wall in the privacy of our own homes. Our faith ought to be displayed in our communities, in our workplaces, amongst all those we come into contact with. We ought to want other people to know just exactly what it is we’re all about.
* * *
1 Peter 1:3-9
Gold medals in suffering?
I’ve always found the verses about suffering in this passage of 1 Peter to be a little…out of place. In the midst of exhortations about new birth and living hope, we are also reminded that life, for all of us, also brings suffering. This is a fact that makes us deeply uncomfortable.
Kate Bowler — author, speaker, assistant professor at Duke Divinity School, and cancer patient — says that “the idea that suffering is always rewarded is deeply rooted in both Christian and American values.” We are unable to reconcile the cruel reality of suffering with our understanding of a good, benevolent God, so we are quick to dismiss suffering (our own or others’) or gloss over it to remind us all that some kind of reward must be coming from it. It even appears here that Peter is saying suffering is necessary in order for us to have genuine faith (vv. 6-7)!
But perhaps that’s not really what Peter means. Rather, what he seems to be talking about is the strength of our faith that is often revealed most when we are suffering. Just like fire reveals the beauty of gold, suffering can reveal the beauty of our faith. When we are facing trials, we rely on God in a whole different way than we do when all is going well.
I once heard a pastor say that a better way to think of Jesus’ “blessed are…” exhortations in the Beatitudes is as “close to God are…” “Blessed” has such a strange connotation in our faith vocabularies, and such language can portray the idea that God actually wants us to suffer.
But what if we shift the words a bit? “Close to God are those who mourn. Close to God are those poor in spirit. Close to God are the hungry and thirsty.” In our suffering, we are close to God, and that is precisely the beauty, reward, and salvation for our souls that Peter is talking about here.
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From team member Katy Stenta:John 20:19-31
Proof of Life
Thomas the Brave is such an understandable soul, not only is he the only one who is not hiding in a room when Jesus comes to greet the disciples, but he needs to see the actual living Jesus Christ in order to understand that he is alive. Thomas is so human in this moment. Do we not all wish to see proof of life of our beloved ones when we have not seen them (and have been concerned about them) for a while? Even more so, it puts me in the mind of my very concrete thinking child with autism. He will ask abrupt and blunt questions all the time. He is not shy to ask people with white hair “Are you old?” and had trouble believing, until we showed him, the body of our beloved deceased cat Lark. “She’s dead, really? No…you are joking.” Sometimes it’s nice to have my child blurt out the obvious questions because we humans are all wondering, “Is this true? Is this real?” But we are scared to ask what we are all wondering. Remember, Jesus has to eat food in front of the disciples, repeatedly, to prove he is not a ghost. So, the rest of the disciples are no different than Thomas is, he is just the one brave enough to say that he won’t believe it until he touches Jesus’ wounds himself. (I still think that instead of touching his wounds, Thomas gives Jesus a big hug instead.)
* * *
1 Peter 1:3-9
The two Justins being ousted in Tennessee and the continuing shootings in the United States, particularly during Holy Week, are showing how justice and the idea of resurrection and the very life-giving practices of humanity are being tested in the United States. However, we keep the faith, for we know what is ultimately promised. Even though victory seems impossible, we know the work is worthy, and that good will ultimately win.
* * *
Psalm 16
It is easy to feel weary these days. When feeling overwhelmed, it’s good to remember that we do not give up on God, because God does not give up on us. It is easy, in the slump of post-Easter, to feel like that the resurrection work has been done or perhaps that God has already done all the work that is to be done. In a world where pastors, churches, congregations, everything seems to be burning out — it is important to remember to rest in the Lord. The fullness of God’s joy is in the refreshing of spring. Thus, with Earth Day, Easter, and spring: here is the encouraging news about the environment for 2023.
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WORSHIPby George Reed
Call to Worship
One: Protect us, O God, for in you we take refuge.
All: You are our God; we have no good apart from you.
One: Let us bless our God who gives us counsel.
All: We will keep the Holy One always before us.
One: God shows us the path of life, even life eternal.
All: In God’s presence we are filled with abundant joy.
OR
One: God comes to us in the power of the resurrection.
All: Praise be to God who brings life out of death.
One: God comes to calm our fears and stand with us.
All: We rejoice in the loving presence of our God.
One: In God there is life, joyful and abundant.
All: We will let go of our fears and embrace God’s joy.
Hymns and Songs
The Strife Is O’er, the Battle Done
UMH: 306
PH: 119
GTG: 236
AAHH: 277
NCH: 242
CH: 221
LBW: 135
W&P: 290
AMEC: 162
Christ Is Risen
UMH: 307
PH: 104
GTG: 248
CH: 222
ELW: 383
Thine Be the Glory
UMH: 308
PH: 122
GTG: 238
NCH: 253
CH: 218
LBW: 145
ELW: 376
W&P: 310
AMEC: 157
He Lives
UMH: 310
AAHH: 275
NNBH: 119
CH: 226
W&P: 302
Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain
UMH: 315
H82: 199/200
PH: 114/115
NCH: 230
CH: 215
LBW: 132
ELW: 363
Come, We That Love the lord
UMH: 732/733
H82: 392
AAHH: 590
NNBH: 367
NCH: 379/382
CH: 707
ELW: 625
W&P: 67
AMEC: 520
Rejoice, the Lord Is King
UMH: 715/716
H82: 481
PH: 155
GTG: 363
NCH: 303
CH: 699
LBW: 171
ELW: 430
W&P: 342
AMEC: 88/89
He Touched Me
UMH: 367
AAHH: 273
NNBH: 147
CH: 564
AMEC: 402
Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart
UMH: 160/161
H82: 556/557
PH: 145/146
GTG: 804
AAHH: 537
NNBH: 7
NCH: 55/71
CH: 15
LBW: 553
ELW: 873/874
W&P: 113
AMEC: 8
I Come with Joy
UMH: 617
H82: 304
PH: 507
NCH: 349
CH: 420
ELW: 482
W&P: 706
Renew: 195
God, You Are My God
CCB: 60
The Steadfast Love of the Lord
CCB: 28
Renew: 23
Music Resources Key
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
GTG: Glory to God, The Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who comes to dispel our fear and fill us with joy:
Grant us the faith to trust that we can rely on you
to hold us in your gracious love for ever and ever;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you dispel our fears and you fill us with your joy. You are gracious in bestowing your love upon all of creation. Help us to trust you to always hold us in your love, now and forevermore. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially when our lack of faith leads us to succumb to our fears.
All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have proven yourself faithful time and again and yet we doubt your love. We allow the things around us to overwhelm us and to cause us to lose our trust in you. We rely too much on our own strength and not enough on yours. Forgive us and renew your Spirit within us that we might truly be faithful disciples of your Christ. Amen.
One: God is gracious and loving and offers us peace. Receive God’s grace and share the news of God’s faithful care to all.
Prayers of the People
Praise and glorious is your name, O God of faithfulness and truth. We offer you our worship because you have always been our loving God.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have proven yourself faithful time and again and yet we doubt your love. We allow the things around us to overwhelm us and to cause us to lose our trust in you. We rely too much on our own strength and not enough on yours. Forgive us and renew your Spirit within us that we might truly be faithful disciples of your Christ.
We give you thanks for all the ways in which you show your trustworthy love for us and for all creation. We thank you for the rising and setting of the sun and the changing of the seasons. We thank you for the constant cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth that is reflected in all that you created. We thank you for those who have shown us your love in their care for us. We thank you for Jesus who died and rose for our sake.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all your people in their need. We pray for those who struggle with fear and those who think joy will never come their way. We pray for those who suffer, those who are dying, and those who are grieving. We pray for those who work to alleviate that suffering of others and to bring healing and joy.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
* * * * * *
CHILDREN'S SERMONDefending the Doubter
by Tom Willadsen
John 20:19-31
Today’s gospel passage, like many in John’s gospel, refers to “the Jews” in a negative light. Everyone in today’s passage is Jewish. Jesus’ disciples are gathered together because they are afraid of the Jewish leaders, not themselves. John’s gospel was written in a time of profound division within Judaism about Jesus’ identity. Was he the Messiah? A powerful, charismatic leader? A corrupter of the faith? A serial Sabbath violator? John’s gospel comes from a specific perspective within Judaism, but read carelessly it can be used to re-sow the seeds of anti-Semitism.
After the little ones have gathered, ask them what they are afraid of. Be prepared for things like older siblings and “getting caught” and the anger of parents. Have some suggestions to get them thinking. In my case that would be spinny rides and tornadoes. I am proud of my consistency, or perhaps loyalty — I’ve been afraid of spinny rides and tornadoes more than 50 years!
Ask the kids what they do when they’re afraid, or when they’re confronted by the things they’re afraid of. In my case, I don’t get on spinny rides and I go to the basement when there’s a tornado warning.
Ask the little ones if they knew that Jesus’ closest followers were afraid. When Jesus was dying on the cross they ran away. After he died they gathered together because they were afraid of the people who did not follow Jesus and had plotted to kill him.
Even after Jesus had appeared to them, after he had risen from the dead, his closest friends were still afraid. They told Thomas that they had seen Jesus alive again. They were very excited, but still afraid. Thomas said that he had to see Jesus alive again with his own eyes.
Right then, Jesus appeared to the disciples, even though they were in a locked room all alone. Jesus showed Thomas the wounds he had from when he was crucified — and Thomas believed that Jesus had risen from the dead!
After that, all the disciples were not as afraid anymore. They were all able to leave the place they went to out of fear.
Jesus knows when we are afraid. Jesus understands when we are afraid. But that doesn’t mean you have to go on a spinny ride if you don’t want to.
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The Immediate Word, April 16, 2023 issue.
Copyright 2023 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
