Sermon Tone Analysis

FOR FURTHER REFLECTION:

Psalm Reading:

What seeds of peace need to be planted in your community?

Where do you see disunity and how might you help to bring unity to those situations?

Bostrom, Kathleen Long.

Daily Feast: Meditations from Feasting on the Word, Year B (Kindle Locations 4578-4579).

Presbyterian Publishing Corporation.

Kindle Edition.

Gospel Reading:

From Pulpitfiction.com:

A Note on Holy Week Scriptural References to “The Jews”

A Note on Holy Week Scriptural References to “The Jews”

As Christians, we live under the burden of a sad and violent history of anti-Semitism, in the sobering shadow of the Shoah (Holocaust), and with the painful awareness of current events in Israel/Palestine.

It is important to us to be clear about what our sacred texts mean when they make reference to “the Jews,” especially during Holy Week, when we contemplate Jesus’ death.

When the crucifixion narratives speak of “the chief priests and leaders of the people,” they are referring to officials who collaborated closely with the Roman systems of oppression, and were viewed with contempt by much of the Jewish community of their time.

They are never to be identified with the Jewish people as a whole, past or present.

It may be helpful to recall the cultural context of our Christian scriptures, emerging as they did from a small, originally Jewish community of believers in Jesus, who for reasons of faith in him as the Messiah, were eventually “put out of the synagogues” (), their places of worship.

In John’s usage especially, “the Jews” functions as a technical term for those among the people who did not accept Jesus as Messiah.

It is a term that reflects the growing antagonism and mutual recrimination that developed in the latter part of the first century between church and synagogue.

The gospels’ use of the term “the Jews” should never be understood, therefore, as a blanket condemnation of Jews in particular or in general.

It is one of the bitter ironies of history that our sacred texts have been used to justify the persecution of the covenant people who were and are forever God’s first love.

Where do you see yourself in this resurrection story?

What character do you most identify with and why?

This week, spend some time reflecting on your own experience meeting Jesus.

What do you feel like your own belief requires?

What Difference Does Easter Really Make?

Trouble in the World

Is Easter Really Over?

Thomas is such an easy person for most of us to identify with.

Of all the characters Jesus meets in the postresurrection world of John’s Gospel, none has left a stronger mark on the imagination of Western Christianity than Thomas.

We love him.

He is the incredulous nonbeliever who hides inside every believing Christian—the questioner in us that resists easy answers to hard questions of faith, who always wants a little more proof.

Easter was a week ago.

The chocolate bunnies have long since lost their ears.

The leftover ham sandwiches or soup have been eaten.

The brightly colored, hard-boiled eggs aren’t old enough for a sniff-check yet, but they are starting to lose their fresh texture.

The clearance candy aisle at CVS is a wonderland of cheap, empty calories.

Easter, says the world, is over.

So. . .

how did Easter change your life?

Really?

How did Easter change your life?

Or is it just the same as it was before Easter Sunday?

And did you know. . .

It’s actually still Easter.

We have 6 full weeks of Easter in the church year.

It’s too important to be just one fleeting Sunday full of flowers and pretty dresses!

One week can come and go with very little impact on our lives.

But 6 weeks?

That’s a significant time commitment!

And the idea of 6 weeks of focus should sound familiar after Lent. . .

which is how long?

Thomas’ Misleading Nickname

Yeah.

6 weeks.

While Easter is a bright and beautiful explosion of joy after a long and difficult 6 week journey through Lent, our journey is not suddenly finished.

Easter Sunday is the hinge between two very special and important seasons in the rhythm of the church year.

We spend 6 weeks in Lent working to move closer and closer to God, moving inward and upward.

Now we have 6 weeks to take what we have learned about God and self and to focus outward: carrying the Gospel out to the world.

So, every year on the first Sunday after Easter, we read this passage from John in which the disciples are locked in a room keeping the Gospel to themselves.

Thomas’ Misleading Nickname

One of the Gospels’ most infamous characters makes his big appearance this Sunday every year: Doubting Thomas.

What a crummy nickname.

It’s totally unfair for him to get stuck with the name “Doubting Thomas”.

On the one hand, it’s a comforting thought that one of the disciples might have doubted Jesus and the power of the resurrection, because most of us doubt it in some form at some point in our lives.

And it’s convenient to have a specific guy to point to and say, “See!

Even one of the first apostles doubted!”

But Thomas being a doubter is not the point of this passage.

The scripture doesn’t call him “Doubting Thomas” anywhere in the original text.

That’s a title given to him by early church leaders, not Jesus or even the other disciples.

Of all the characters Jesus meets in the postresurrection world of John’s Gospel, none has left a stronger mark on the imagination of Western Christianity than Thomas.

We love him.

He is the incredulous nonbeliever who hides inside every believing Christian—the questioner in us that resists easy answers to hard questions of faith, who always wants a little more proof.

Thomas isn’t asking for anything more than the others (including the women) did.

He just needs to see the Lord in the same way the rest of the disciples have.

And he doesn’t need this proof because he wants equal treatment with the other disciples.

He hasn’t seen them living in a way that suggests anything has changed since Jesus died on that cross.

But it’s totally unfair for him to get stuck with the name “Doubting Thomas”.

Thomas isn’t asking for anything more than the others (including the women) did.

He just needs to see the Lord in the same way the rest of the disciples have.

It’s not that he doesn’t believe Jesus, he doesn't believe the other disciples!

They haven’t changed yet!

They aren’t showing any evidence of the resurrection’s effect on their lives.

There is great disunity among the community.

They’ve kind of all fallen apart.

Remember they scattered before the crucifixion.

The Spirit has been breathed out onto them by Jesus himself and yet they haven’t changed.

I wouldn’t believe those guys either.

And neither would anyone else.

Why should they?

The return of Shalom: Peace Be With You

The disciples are still terrified, and that’s human.

It’s not an unreasonable reaction to the events that have happened over the past week or two.

Scripture says that they are scared of the Jewish authorities.

If you want some more information on the misuse of that phrase as it’s been translated through the years, grab one of the handouts or manuscripts on your way out today.

They weren’t afraid of “Jews”.

They WERE Jews.

They were afraid of the particular Jews who were in charge at the time.

And that is because they were in mortal peril.

So it’s not that their fear of going outside that locked door is invalid.