The breath of God, fire, God within and around us. Through our readings today, on this day of Pentecost, we get an intoxicating feeling of being surrounded and held up by the mysterious power and presence of God through the Holy Spirit. Every year on this day, as we read together from the Acts of …
Come behold the wondrous mystery/Slain by death the God of life/But no grave could e’er restrain Him/Praise the Lord; He is alive!/What a foretaste of deliverance/How unwavering our hope/Christ in power resurrected/As we will be when he comes.
This is Jesus making an authoritative claim to be the way of salvation, salvation for the whole of the cosmos. Jesus’ being the way is not being the access point, a directive to turn or burn. Rather Jesus through Jesus — because of Jesus — we have the truths of God and through those truths we have life abundant….None of the Abrahamic religions’ truth claims is a call to dominance. Rather each of them is a call to their adherents to embrace the love of God and do the work God has given them to do. They’re calls to deepen one’s faith and trust in the fullness and goodness of God.
Luke’s point is that in life in Jesus we are drawn to care for one another, to care for all of our neighbors and the whole of creation, and that the Spirit empowers us and draws us into that care. … In Jesus’ defeat of death, in the sending of the Spirit, and in our gathering together to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers, abundant life has been made available to us.
The problem of how to live in a world ruled by empire whose appetite for domination must consume and kill even the incarnate God is an incredibly difficult problem. This problem is solved by walking. The mystery of the eucharist interweaves transcendent categories of time, identity, divinity, and ritual. It is the central Christian activity. Both the walking of the way and the breaking of the bread are only possible in community.
Thomas is only asking for as much as everyone else – the women at the tomb, the eleven disciples – has had themselves. He wants to see the Lord wants to know with his own eyes and hands that Jesus is risen from the dead. So as we hear this passage again, I’m again not struck by Thomas’ disbelief.
Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death and to those in the tombs bestowing life. We are confronted by death every day on the news. From global wars to shootings in schools to complications with pregnancies. Easter doesn’t make those hurt any less. Easter doesn’t take away the reality that death surrounds us. Jesus died at the hands of sinners and Mary going to mourn is how she found the good news that he didn’t stay dead.
Jesus this evening has raised Lazarus. He’s predicted his own death. He knows its coming. Still he goes to pray that it might happen another way. That we might hear his message, that those who’ve followed him and heard him speaking clearly in the synagogues will love one another. But they don’t. We don’t.