Do Not Doubt

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 20:19:29:

Nicknames are interesting things. Sometimes they seem strange, sometimes they hit the mark, and sometimes we might not even know what they mean or where they came from. And as nicknames go, sports stars often end up with some great nicknames, especially those who are the best of their craft. There is Walter Payton, known as Sweetness, and Wayne Gretzky, the Great One, and Jack Nicholas, the Golden Bear.  But of course, the best nicknames come from baseball.  There is Stan the Man, and Cool Papa Bell  and Double Duty Radcliff. Some nicknames become so famous, like Babe Ruth, Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean that we forget their real first names.  But for every great nickname like Mr. October or Hammerin’ Hank there are also those nicknames that are a little less glorious, a little more likely that people probably wish they would have gone away, like Luke Old Aches and Pains Appling, or Ernie the Schnozz Lombardi, but perhaps the worst nickname belongs to Hugh Mulcahy who, because he never had a winning record in any complete season in which he pitched, was known as Losing Pitcher Mulcahy.  I am sure that if you were to have met Mr. Mulcahy he would not have appreciated you calling him by his nickname and just wished it would all go away.  But just like those nicknames are a little unfair, so too is the nickname that has been forever appended to Thomas, who, for some reason, for 2000 years has been the poster boy for doubt, an idea that is not really fair either to Thomas or to the concept of doubt.

Today we begin a new worship series entitled the nots of Jesus, which has nothing to do with ropes, but instead with the things that Jesus tells us not to do. Normally we talk about the things we’re supposed to do like forgive or feed the hungry or be peacemakers, but there are actually quite a few things Jesus tells us not to do, and so we’re going to spend the next nine weeks, which seems like a lot, but doesn’t cover all of the nots, looking at, interpreting and trying to figure out how we should not be doing certain things. And that’s sort of the point because often the things Jesus says not to do are things that also often cause us to tie ourselves in knots. And so, we’re going to find ways to free ourselves through Christ. And today we start with the injunction that gets read every year after Easter and that is Jesus telling Thomas “do not doubt,” form which Thomas gets his terrible nickname, and so I’d like to take just a moment to give a defense of Thomas, which I think will also help us to get at the subject of doubt and what it means for us.

Do Caterpillars Dream of Butterflies?

Here is my message for Easter Sunday. The text was Matthew 28:1-10:

The imagery we used for the season of Lent, which are the Sundays leading up to Easter, where those surrounding caterpillars and cocoons as a prelude to using butterflies for Easter, which is a traditional symbol for this day of celebration. And that got me thinking about that transition from caterpillar to butterfly. First, it’s pretty amazing, because it’s not like these things really look alike. It’s not just that the caterpillar grows wings, there is a change in shape and size. Imagine if alligators turned into rhinoceroses, or cats turned into birds. We might be a little amazed at that, rather than sort of taking it for granted, like we seem to do with caterpillars turning into butterflies because that’s just what they do; we’re used to it and expect it. But perhaps we should be a little more astonished by the whole thing. But the other thing I was wondering was whether caterpillars know that’s what’s going to happen? Do caterpillars dream of butterflies? Or do they see a butterfly flying around and recognize them for who they used to be? Like, “hey, it’s Amy! I remember her when she was just a caterpillar.” Or do they just go into their chrysalis because that’s what’s encoded in what they do, not having any idea of what’s on the other side? I don’t know that we can ever know the answer to that because last I checked we haven’t been able to interview any caterpillars or butterflies, but there is something spectacular about them anyways, and of course they have obvious comparisons to the Easter story which is why they have become a symbol. New life. New beginnings. Transition and change. And all the other things that come with Jesus’ resurrection and the empty tomb and the reasons we are gathering here this day to shout our alleluias and proclaim that Christ is risen.

Three years ago for Easter Matthew was also the gospel reading for for the day, and I was planning on talking about earthquakes, and the things that happen that shake our lives and change them forever. But then we ended up being online only for Easter, speaking of things that shake up our lives, and because of that we did not get to do the baptism we had planned for that day, which we will finally do today, along with Jesse’s brother who was born in the interim. But what I ended up talking about that Easter was liminal space and times. Liminality is the in-between times in which transition is happening. That it is no longer one thing, but it’s not yet the other thing either. A good example of this is the threshold of a door. When we cross through a door there is a space there where we are no longer in one room but not yet in the other either. We are not yet outdoors, but we’re no longer indoors. We are in that in-between space, and not only was that time with COVID like that, but the gap between Good Friday and Easter is like that. The tomb is a liminal space. And even post Easter can be seen as liminal, because no one yet knew what was going to happen.

Without Blemish

This was my message for Maundy Thursday. The text was Psalm 91:

Jesus came into Jerusalem for the last time in order to celebrate Passover. It is one of the great pilgrimage holidays that brought people to Jerusalem, and while Holy Week and Passover don’t always coincide this year they did with Passover ending at sunset today. And so, every year as the assigned readings for Maundy Thursday it includes the reading for Exodus about the Passover. And yet surprisingly, or at least to me, in sixteen years in ministry I have never actually preached on the story as it relates to this week or this day, until tonight. And then it’s not really to explore the story of Passover itself, and I’m working on the possibility of a series on the book of Exodus, so perhaps we’ll get to that message sometime in the near future, but there was one line that stood out to me as I was working on this service. For those who did the prayer series as part of programming night and doing Lectio Divina, this is part of that process of letting the Spirit speak to us and having things pop up in importance. Although then it’s the work of trying to figure out why this thing seemed important. But the phrase that stood out to me, amongst all of the readings this year, and it was that phrase “without blemish.”