University Worship Service - 4/23/17 - Barbara Brown Taylor

47:14 it is good to be back with you on the sunday after in a lot of churches it's the day you can count on a guest preacher on the substitute organist and a lone choir soloist, because the regular organist and the choir and the pastor really need a day off. Not in Duke Chapel, clearly, but in a lot of places. In my church, we call it Low Sunday, because the attendance is usually low, along with the adrenaline. Sometimes you can find an Easter bulletin still tucked in the hymnal. from last week, or a kind of shriveled azalea blossom under your pew that fell from the flowered cross when the sexton took it out on Monday. Faithful Christians may say, the Lord is risen all year long, but on this Sunday in particular, it can feel as if he was risen last week. So in some ways, it's a lot like other weeks after, the week after the wedding, the week after the graduation, the week after the baptism, the birth, the death.

48:31 What now? What next? Nothing will ever be the same, but how are they different exactly? You know, it's just too soon to tell. In other ways, the problem with the week after Easter is that things aren't all that different. After 40 days of preparing for the life-altering reality of Jesus' resurrection, you're still slammed at work you're still shaken by the headlines still waking up in the middle of the night to more anxieties than hallelujahs at least some of us are even if the world isn't different shouldn't we be? where is the peace that passes all understanding the evidence of things not seen There aren't many week-after stories in the Gospels. Mark is in such a rush that he wraps things up at the empty tomb. Matthew adds a few lines about Jesus meeting his disciples in Galilee and commissioning them to carry on.

49:33 Luke tells a great story about a stranger showing up to walk with two disciples on the road to Emmaus. but that happens on the same day that Jesus vanishes from his tomb. And the minute the disciples recognize the stranger, he's gone, taken up into heaven and out of their sight.

49:58 John's the only one who really lingers on what it's like to be a disciple after Easter. He's the only one with a week after story about Jesus and a disciple named Didymus. the twin, better known to most of us as doubting Thomas because he had some trust issues the others didn't have. Or at least that's the allegation. If you think about it, I'm not sure Thomas was any less trusting than the others. When Mary Magdalene ran home from the cemetery to tell Peter and the beloved disciple that Jesus wasn't in his tomb, they didn't believe her. they ran to see for themselves. When Jesus came back that same first night to the house where the disciples were hiding, they believed because they saw him for themselves. The only reason Thomas got singled out was because he wasn't there.

50:57 He didn't get to see anything for himself, which is why he had questions the others didn't have. They had evidence. He had hearsay. He wasn't trying to decide whether he believed Jesus had risen from the dead. He was trying to decide whether or not he believed what the other disciples told him. And he decided he didn't. He couldn't until he saw for himself what they had seen. So his trust issue wasn't with Jesus. It was with his brothers. over the past couple of weeks, I have been asking a lot of people who know the Thomas story what they think about him. It takes a village to make a sermon.

51:40 And they all said the same thing. They said they knew they were supposed to disapprove of him, but they didn't. They liked his honesty. They knew where he was coming from. They were actually kind of grateful for him because Thomas is their proof that even people who were right there had trouble believing that Jesus had risen from the dead. Like all of his brothers, Thomas had heard Jesus' best sermons, sometimes more than once. He knew how far Jesus could walk in a day and what he liked for supper. He'd witnessed the healings, the feedings, the raising of Lazarus. Thomas had even heard Jesus predict his own death, though nothing had prepared him for the brutality of it. afterwards Thomas was as ruined as the rest of them by what had happened then Thomas was as baffled as the rest of them when Mary came home from the cemetery for the second time and said she had seen the Lord but after that Thomas became the missing disciple the one who wasn't there he wasn't there in the house with the others that night he wasn't there when Jesus came and stood among them.

53:01 Wasn't there when Jesus gave them his peace, showed them his wounds, gave them power over sin, bid them receive the Holy Spirit. Basically, when Jesus gave them everything he had to bring his little church back to life. Before the disciples saw him that night, all they'd been able to see was the end of them. That locked-up house was the end of the line. It was the end of the vision that they had given up all other visions of their lives to serve. They had the breath knocked out of them, the life. They couldn't remember how to breathe.

53:43 If you or anyone you love has ever had a panic attack, you know what fear can do to you. The pounding heart, the flop sweat, hair standing up all over you. It can make you think you're dying. Same thing if you've ever had the breath knocked out of you. Breathlessness, it can come at you in all kinds of ways. Bad asthma, hard falls, heart failure, sudden violence. Who can forget Eric Garner in a chokehold one hour before he died, lying face down on a New York City sidewalk saying, I can't breathe 11 times. God save us all.

54:29 However it happens, no breath means no life. There's no way forward without breath. Before Jesus showed up, that is what had the disciples all locked up. Then Jesus showed them how to breathe again. he breathed on them and that's when their fear John says turned to rejoicing somehow he knew that was what they needed more than anything they had to be able to breathe before they could hear anything else he had to say so he gave them divine CPR gave them his own breath to bring them back to life like God creating humankind all over again only this time the breath of life came from the Christ's own lungs and Thomas wasn't there. In the usual interpretation of the story, his problem was that he needed physical proof that God had raised Jesus from the dead.

55:32 Thomas was the holdout. He was the agnostic, the guy who wouldn't take anyone else's word for anything. He wanted to weigh the evidence for himself, and unless he was able to do that, he said he would not believe. It reminds me of a movie that's playing in my hometown right now, The Case for Christ. in which an investigative journalist sets out to disprove the truth of Christianity and ends up becoming Christian instead. I haven't seen it, so I can't comment. But I have read books like The Trial of Jesus from a Lawyer's Standpoint and others that work at the story as a way of convincing readers by way of fact. And maybe that's what Thomas was holding out for, facts. If he could have taken a DNA sample from Jesus' side, maybe he would have, and held off committing until the results were in.

56:30 But if you listen to what Thomas says, I think another possibility opens up. Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, Thomas says, and put my finger in the mark of the nails, and my hand in his side, I will not believe. It's the wounds he wants to see, not the face. He wants to touch the places where Jesus, the Jesus he knew, was hurt, where the spear went into his side even after Jesus was dead. So here's the other possibility. What if Thomas isn't holding out for proof that Jesus came back from all that? what if he's holding out for proof that Jesus hasn't come back divorced from all that what if Thomas needs to see for himself that the risen one is the same one who died who has not come back all healed up and good as new but who has returned to his friends with visible evidence that he will never leave what is most human about himself behind If that's a possibility, then Thomas isn't looking for physical proof of Jesus' resurrection.

57:52 He's looking for existential proof that the one whom God has raised up is the same one who was damaged beyond all human repair. He's looking for evidence that this Messiah knows everything there is to know about the worst kind of breathlessness and will never discard it, never discount it, not here and not in the hereafter. Otherwise, what should Thomas believe? That life in God means leaving this life behind? That faith means seeing the wounded world as a passing illusion to be born only until God returns to wake us all up? Thomas wasn't having it. He wanted to see the marks on Jesus' body. He wanted to reach out his real hand and touch Jesus' real wounds.

58:49 Only then would he believe that it mattered. That Jesus' resurrected life meant something to everyone, to every life, no matter how hurt and scared. Many years ago, I and about 300 other people attended a baptism at which Desmond Tutu, the retired archbishop of Cape Town, presided. It was not like this. It was totally impromptu, arranged at the last minute during a conference we were all attending in the mountains of North Carolina. Tutu had completely wooed all of us by then, first by showing up in an orange dashiki and baggy shorts and plastic flip-flops, and second by giggling just a lot, this Nobel Peace Prize winner who had come through hell on Earth in South Africa without losing his ability to laugh.

59:47 The way I remember it, someone in the audience knew a family who just welcomed a baby with Down syndrome into the family. They wanted the baby baptized, but they didn't belong to a church. So the person in the audience, their obstetrician, I think, asked Archbishop Tutu if he would perform the baptism, and he said yes, on the condition that all of the conferees could serve as witnesses. That way, when it came time to ask the question about whether everyone present would support this child in his new life in Christ. The baby and his family would hear 300 people saying, we will.

1:00:32 So that's how it happened. The next night, Saturday night, we gathered in the auditorium for the service. There was a makeshift baptismal font set up on the stage, a pitcher of water on a table beside it. The place looked as nice as the auditorium in a camp conference center can look, which isn't saying much. But it didn't matter since the archbishop only had eyes for the baby. Before he invited the family to come forward, he poured the water into the font. Then he prayed over the water in his native language, hosa, which has a lot of clicks in it. Next he did something I've never seen anyone do before or since. He leaned over the water and he blew on it. Once this way. and once this way He leaned over and blew, breathed the sign of the cross into the water.

1:01:36 And then he invited the family to walk through the sea on dry ground with their baby in their arms. It was the evidence of things not seen. It was a moment full of the peace that passes all understanding. Did the family come through to the other side with their wounds intact of course they did in the midst of much rejoicing one of my favorite teachers says that as long as you are still breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you. Low bar.

1:02:14 Thomas put it more forcefully once he had seen the marks on Jesus' body for himself. My Lord and my God, he said. And he wasn't the missing disciple anymore. Thomas was back a week late, but back. and Jesus didn't seem to mind showing up for him alone. So take a breath, you faithful ones, still here after all these years. Blessed are you who have not seen and yet have believed. The Lord is risen.