A Believing Heart (Easter 2A)

 

The Doubt of St. Thomas, James He Qi 

   

“A Believing Heart”
Second Sunday of Easter (Year A)
12 April 2026
Homily Delivered Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Sutherlin, Oregon

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

10 am Sung Mass 
Acts 2:14a, 22-32 ; 1 Peter 1:3-9 ; John 20:19-31 ; Psalm 16

 

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

 take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

Moments of hopeless despair come to us occasionally.  One for me occurred in Lewes Delaware in the early 80s:  my wife Elena and I had taken our still growing family to the beach.  After a long, relaxed day, the sun was about to set. No one was left on the beach but us.  Elena was sheltering from cool evening wind under a blanket; I was reading.  We each thought the other was watching the children, playing in the sand beside us. Elena suddenly said with terror in her voice, “Where’s Lonnie?”  We looked up and down the beach as far as we could see.   Our four-year old was nowhere to be seen.  Panicking, I began to run along the beach in the direction we had last seen him, trying to spot him on the beach in the lowering mists and scanning the water: that vast Atlantic Ocean only feet from us, its rising treacherous surf just high enough to sweep our little boy off of his feet.  The last people we had seen on the beach, maybe 15 minutes before, looked sketchy at best.  Now, in our imaginations, they seemed like monstrous threats to children.   The growing twilight focused our fear into one spot of sharp despair in our hearts. Holding hands, Elena and I prayed against hope, “God please help us find Lonnie.  Please keep him safe.”   Then Elena said, “It’s a distance to the changing room, but maybe he went to the bathroom without telling anyone. You know how private he is.”  So I ran back toward the barrier dunes. Just as I got to the boardwalk, there was Lonnie, walking calming and quietly back from the rest room.    I hugged him hard. He seemed puzzled at all the sudden attention from Mom and Dad.

 

Elena and I were very thankful.  Lonnie was safe as we had prayed.  Thinking about it afterward, we wondered, had God answered our prayer?   Or had we just misunderstood things and gotten very frightened needlessly?  No one had bothered Lonnie in the restroom, and he had not lost his way.  And he most certainly had not drowned.  From his point of view, nothing remarkable had happened at all.  From ours, the world itself had changed, and we were very thankful. 

 

It’s like that a lot with answers to prayers and miracles in our lives:  though from inside they seem to be overwhelming evidence of God’s care and love, perhaps even providence or supernatural intervention, from the outside they can be explained as misunderstandings, the resolution of groundless fears, the normal working of nature, or, perhaps mere coincidence. 

 

When I was a boy, I was taught that God heard and answered prayers, and that miracles just like those in the Bible could happen to us, if we were righteous enough.   But then I grew up.   We live in an age of science and of sophistication.  Growing up means absorbing that. 

I admit it: Doubt is a good thing, something that helps keep us safe from hucksters, grifters, and con-men, and from misunderstanding the varied and puzzling sense perceptions that pour in.   God placed doubt in our hearts, and made it a part of growing up, to help keep us safe.  It is part of our survival instinct. 

 

But we are diminished if we let doubt rob us of our sense of gratitude and wonder.   A subtle, niggling voice in the back of my head now is almost always there, ready to chime in at moments of joy and thankfulness and say, “An answered prayer?  A miracle? Maybe not so much.”  It discourages me from praying, or at least actually asking God for what I desire in my heart.  I am afraid of having my heart broken:  asking what I desire deeply, something good and right, and then getting that hope slapped down.  

 

I admit this by way of confession:  whatever change has happened in my heart, it is not entirely good.  I can confess it publicly today without much embarrassment because I think that most of us have suffered a similar loss as we became adults. 

 

In today’s Gospel, it is clear that Thomas has suffered such a loss of innocence: “I won’t believe Jesus has come back from the dead unless I see it with my own eyes touch it with my own hands!”  It’s really unfair to sum up this story and the whole of St. Thomas’ life by saying that he, Doubting Thomas, was the lone skeptic among the disciples.  In every one of the stories of the resurrection of Jesus, all the disciples—bar none—at various times expressed doubt or fear at what they were told or even what they saw. 

 

The heart’s disposition reflects who we are.  As the Proverbs say, “As a person thinks in their heart, so are they” (Prov 23:7).  And as we see in the story of the choice of David as king, “Human beings judge people on outward appearances, but Yahweh looks on their heart” (1 Sam 16:7).

 

So in today’s story, Jesus tells all of us, along with Thomas, “do not doubt, but believe.”  The Greek text is clearer than our translation here:  do not be apistos, but be pistos— do not be unfaithful but faithful, do not be untrusting but trusting, do not be untrustworthy but trustworthy. 

 

Be believing.  Be faithful.  Be trusting.  There are so many scriptures that play on this theme!  Jesus ends most of his parables with “let the one who has ears, hear!”  Without a trusting disposition of the heart, we are deaf to any voice that matters. 

 

Paul says, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7).  And because of this faith, he says, we are not afraid, either to live or to die.  Trust and love have replaced fear. 

 

Jesus in John’s Gospel says it is how we react to his words, in a trusting or a rejecting manner, that reveals who and what we are: “I came not to judge, but to save.  It is my word that has already created a judgment of sorts—how you react to it tells who you are” (John 12).  

 

I suspect that most of the stories of miracles and deeds of wonder in scripture tell things in such a way that this implicit judgment is evident in the telling of the story:  how could the Egyptians, the backsliding Israelites, or the Pharisees not be wicked when they persist in fighting God and Jesus in the face of such clear evidence of the miracles as narrated?

 

But I think that events in real human lives lying behind such stories probably were for the people there a bit more ambiguous.   For whatever reason, God seems to have made the world in such a way that we are never forced by evidence to believe in him.   God wants willing trust, not coerced obedience.   I suspect this is because forced trust is not really trust; compelled love, not really love.    To be sure, moments occur that seem overwhelmingly convincing.  But usually this is at the end of a series of small steps in the ambiguous dark.  We draw close to God in faith by little steps, and God responds once in a great while with a giant step toward us.  But then the moment is gone, and we are left with our memory.  And memory itself is very ambiguous.  Faith often consists in persisting in our trust and love from those high moments even in the dark, dry periods that follow. 

 

Whether you believe in God, or the Bible, or religion, is not the issue.  But having a trusting, believing heart is at the core of being a happy and balanced person.  It is at the heart of being a Christian.  Having a trusting heart is at the core of being trustworthy: honesty breeds honesty. A believing heart wisely lets the niggling voice raise its doubts, but does not let it rob us of our thanks, trust, and hope.  A believing heart persists in openness to the strange, the unprecedented, and the as yet unseen.  It does not belittle the faith of others, even when it seems strange or silly.  A believing heart continues to pray, and to act and serve as if all the good stories are true, even when doubt comes.  A believing heart is a great bulwark against fear.  It senses intuitively that there is no problem so big, no disaster too awful, no corner so dark that God cannot help us through it.  While a believing heart is not belief in magical control of things to suit ourselves, it cultivates and honors a sense of wonder and magic at the heart of everything.  It recognizes the love that is beneath and behind all things. 

 

Trusting God through the dark, expressing thanks through the ambiguity, praying and asking for help despite our niggling interior voice, and trying to be honest with God and ourselves through all of this leads us through the doubt and finally brings us to that light where there is no room for anything but thanks, just like for Thomas in today’s reading. 

 

John Bell and the Iona Community set words about this story to the traditional Scots Gaelic tune Leis an Lurghainn, and called it Tom’s Song:  

 

Where they were, I’d have been;

What they saw, I’d have seen;

What they felt, I’d have shown,

If I knew what they’d known.

 

Refrain

“Peace be with you,” he said,

“Take my hand, see my side.

Stop your doubting, believe

And God’s spirit receive.” 

 

So I made my demand

That unless, at first hand,

I could prove what they said,

I’d presume he was dead. 

 

All their tales I called lies

Till his gaze met my eyes;

And the words I’d rehearsed

Lost their force and dispersed.

 

When I stammered “My Lord!”

He replied with the word,

“Those who live in God’s light

Walk by faith, not by sight.” 

 

Some, like me, ask for proof,

Sit and sneer, stand aloof.

But belief which is blessed

Rests on God, not a test. 

 

Refrain

“Peace be with you,” he said,

“Take my hand, see my side.

Stop your doubting, believe

And God’s spirit receive.” 

 

Tom's Song  

 

As we go forth into our ambiguous world, marked with beauty and joy but also with terror and despair, a world that demands doubt from us as a self-defense mechanism but also gives us a hope for miracles, let us take faith and trust and belief to heart, and with hope transcending this world’s threats and fears, including death itself, come joyfully to that locked away upper room and with blessed Thomas take hold of our risen Lord’s hand. 

Thanks be to God, Amen

 

From Proclamation to Stories of Faith (Easter A)

  

From Proclamation to Stories of Faith
The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP. Ph.D.

Easter A
5 April 2026 9 a.m. Sung Eucharist

St. Luke Episcopal Church, Grants Pass (Oregon)

Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

May the light of Christ, rising in glory,
banish all darkness from our hearts and minds.   Amen.

 

The story of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the heart of our Christian faith.   But we live in a secular time, and I have gotten used to hearing the question about this time of year, from believers and unbelievers alike, But Tony, do you really believe it?

 

It just seems too fantastic, as some kind of wish fulfillment fantasy.  It goes against what our universal experience as human beings is:  Dead people just don’t come back to life. 

 

Occasionally some add, “How can you believe it? If you compare all of the stories about it in the gospels, it’s clear they are late, contradict each other, and grew in the telling.”

 

But though these stories were in fact written decades after the events they recount, and though they show up all the marks of having grown in the telling, the earliest form of this tradition that has survived is not found in the stories in the Gospels at all.  It is not even a story.  It is a fragment of apostolic preaching found in St. Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians.  Writing barely a decade and a half after Jesus’s death, Paul tells us of what he was taught after his experience on the Road to Damascus:

 

 “For I passed on to you the tradition that I also received: that Christ died for our sins …, that he was buried, that he rose the third day, … and that he appeared, first to Cephas [Peter] and the Twelve, then to over 500 Christians at once (some of whom … are still alive), then to James [the brother of Jesus] and the apostles. … and last of all … to me” (1 Cor 15:3-8).

 

It is from this early citation of the preaching of Jesus’ comrades that grow the later gospel stories.  And the direction of evolution is clear. 

 

The earliest story as such that has survived is the Gospel of Mark, written about 40 years after Jesus’ death.  In it, the women return to the tomb early on the morning after the Sabbath with spices to properly anoint the body of Jesus, which had been dumped in the tomb in haste just before the Sabbath started.  They see the stone has been rolled back, and a young man (an angel) in a white robe tells them that “Jesus … has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him” (Mark 16:6).  You see, the words of the early apostolic proclamation “he rose,” have been placed onto the lips of a character in the story, the angel: “He is risen.”  Then the angel adds, “Go tell the disciples … that he is going to Galilee.  There you will see him, as he told you” (Mark 16:7).  Here again, the early apostolic proclamation “he appeared” is placed onto the angel’s lips in this narrative, but now in the future: he will appear.  Mark does not narrate the resurrection of Jesus as such, but tells of an empty tomb and lets his audience’s imaginations do the rest. In the original form of Mark, the story ends abruptly with the women fleeing from the tomb in terror and saying nothing to others because of their fear (Mark 16:8).   

 

The next Gospels to be written, Matthew and Luke, about 15-30 years later, take Mark’s story and develop it. Matthew adds a lot of narrative detail. He develops the story about the guards and the stone, and brings in an earthquake that opens graves throughout the city, marking this event as part of the resurrection of the martyred righteous on the last day in Jewish apocalyptic literature.  This is how Matthew fleshes out the apostolic preaching’s “he was raised.” The women run excitedly to report to the disciples. As the women are running to tell the disciples, Jesus actually appears to them (Matt. 28:9) and the early apostolic preaching’s “and he appeared” becomes part of a narrative rather than simply the apostolic affirmation quoted in Paul or a report of the angel as in Mark.

 

In Luke, the women tell the disciples what they have seen, but they don’t believe them, thinking that they are just women’s “idle tales” (Luke 24:11).  But Peter runs to the tomb, and looks in—there he sees “the linen clothes by themselves” (Luke 24:12).  This added detail seems to be an effort to explain the actual raising of Jesus proper, suggesting that somehow the corpse of Jesus had simply evaporated when he rose, leaving the burial clothes lying there. This element of the story in Luke is later taken up in exquisite detail in John.  

 

Luke then adds the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus on Easter evening (Luke 24:13-35). Jesus incognito appears to them, talks to them, and finally they recognize him as he explains the scriptures (in the early apostolic preaching, Jesus died and was raised “according to the [Hebrew] scriptures.”    In looking back on it, they say they recognized him in the breaking of the bread, suggesting that the eucharist was one of the ways Jesus appeared. This story in Luke was circulating among early Christians, for it shows up in extremely abbreviated form in some manuscript copies of Mark where scribes added later, longer endings using these traditions found in Luke to help bring that originally truncated Gospel into harmony with the others (Mark 16:12-13). 

 

Luke then has the two disciples return to Jerusalem to tell the news.  All of this is on Easter evening.  When they tell their story, the disciples reply that Jesus has appeared to Peter (Luke 24:35).  Again, the apostolic proclamation is placed on the lips of characters in the story.  But Luke narrates Jesus appearing to the disciples as well (Luke 24:36-43).  There is great detail—“See my hands and my feet—it really is me!” he says, “I am no ghost, look I have flesh and bones!”  Then to prove it, he eats some broiled fish they give him. 

 

Today’s Gospel in John, written another 30 years later than Matthew and Luke, tells the story about Mary mistaking the risen Jesus for the gardener, the competition between John and Peter to run to get to the tomb first, and greater elaboration on the strangely placed burial clothes.  A form of Luke’s story of Jesus appearing to the disciples the evening of Easter is taken up by John.  It is the familiar story where Thomas is not present to witness Jesus reappearing bodily on  the evening of Easter, but then is there a week later to see a later appearance.   Interesting, for John, the sending of the Spirit occurred not 50 days after Easter on the Day of Pentecost, but on the evening of Easter Sunday, when Jesus “breathes” it into his disciples (John 20:19-29). 

 

Other snippets of differing stories show up in addendums to the four Gospels, with Jesus appearing also in Galilee, whether on a mountain or on the lakeshore. 

 

If we move another few decades ahead, we start seeing in Gospels that were not included in the canon actually recounting in narrative the resurrection itself.  In the Gospel of Peter, the two soldiers see it all:  the heavens open, two angels descend in a great flash of light, the stone rolls away by itself, and then angels come out of the tomb, supporting a third person walking with difficulty, apparently Jesus still wounded from the cross.  There follows a glowing floating cross.  A voice comes from heaven “You have preached to the dead,” and the cross, which also is apparently a talking cross, replies, “Yes.” 

 

It is clear that over time, greater and greater details were added.  It is also clear that reflection on Hebrew Scripture, especially the Psalter, informs each retelling.  But those of us who pray the Psalms daily know that this collection of poems and hymns is above all a book about emotion—the whole range of human emotion, from love, and adoration, to joy, to sorrow, to homicidal rage.  It is understandable why such a book would have exerted such a central role in the process of the formation of memory and the retelling of such emotion-laden stories.   Memory, after all, is a matter of emotion, not stenographic recording.  And all memory morphs over time. 

 

But that does not mean that all the details in the canonical Gospels are simple artifacts of story-telling, with no grounding in events.  Remember—the earliest reports, even before the story-tellers’ art began to spin these tales—was this: “Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared.”  

 

As a historian, I find a purely mythological reading of the resurrection stories to be unconvincing. The early disciples were no fools.  They knew the difference between wishful thinking and personal experience.  The idea that the stories of Jesus’ being was raised were merely a figment of the imagination of Jesus’ disciples mourning him in grief groups is to my mind hardly likely.  There is just too quick a shift—from utter demoralization and despair at Jesus’ death to bull-headed and joyful optimism and willingness to suffer martyrdom for Jesus’ sake—at the origin of Christianity. 

 

For me, it is a much more probable to say that something shocking and unusual, something unique, happened on Easter morning than to argue that the early apostolic proclamation arose simply as the result of a group of Jesus’ followers sitting shiva and proof-texting the Hebrew scriptures.  The problem, of course, is whether we allow for the possibility of such a thing.  It was the experience of witnessing this unique thing, the bodily reappearance of a living Christ who had been dead, that led the disciples to reconsider everything they had seen in his life, and reaffirm their faith that he was indeed the hoped for Messiah, despite the fact that he didn’t conform to all the triumphant connotations that figure held in many Hebrew scriptures. It led them to relabel his miserable sufferings and death as the embodiment of the suffering servant songs of Second Isaiah as well as the psalms talking about suffering and persecution.    

 

I really do believe that Jesus of Nazareth, dead and buried after being brutalized by the Roman Imperium, was somehow raised from death into a new and more vital form of life, and came to his friends more alive than they had ever seen him before.  It was so unusual, in fact, that in some of the stories, the disciples don’t even recognize Jesus. But they all eventually recognize the one standing before them as the same person as their friend who had died on a cross days earlier.

 

Siblings in Christ:  Christ died for our sake.  He was buried.  One and a half days later, he came forth again, and he appeared to his disciples. He appeared in such a way that they knew he was no resuscitated corpse, no ghost, no dream, no wish-fulfillment.  It was wholly unprecedented and the disciples clearly had problems finding adequate language to express what they had seen, felt, and experienced.  They finally settled on an obscure mythological image from the Book of Daniel to describe what they had seen and experienced.  There, the deep injustice of the death by torture of righteous Jews by the Seleucid Greek Syrians before the Maccabean revolt was seen as rectified by the idea that in the last day, the dead martyrs would come to life again, be reconstituted with their bodies, only “shining like the stars in heaven” (Dan12:2-3).Thus the historical experience of Jesus’ bodily reappearance seen in the apostolic preaching was interpreted and explained as “resurrection from the dead,” an eschatological act of God.  Many of the details in the stories as they evolved reflect this mythological understanding of that unique historical event.    

 

Christ’s victory over death, hell, and evil is a victory over fear. meaninglessness, bitterness, and remorse.   It is God’s great joke on the world, and must silence all hopeless irony that says “don’t you believe it!”  No.  Rather, “BELIEVE IT!” We are not doomed to failure and despair.  We are not destined for permanent oblivion after sickness, diminishment, inevitable decline and dignity-destroying death.   We are invited to share in his life. 

 

Jesus’ coming forth as life itself means that death does not have the final word.  Fear does not have the final word.  Law and judgment do not have the final word.  Vengeance does not have the final word.  Oppression will cease.  We are not doomed to regret and pain.  War does not have the final word, nor does violence. 

 

Alleluia!  Christ is risen, the Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!

 

Be With Me (Palm / Passion Sunday A)

   

Be With Me

Palm/ Passion Sunday A
29 March 2026 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist

Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Sutherlin (Oregon)

Matt 21:1-11; Psa 118:1-2, 19-29; Isa 50:4-9a; Phil 2:5-11; Matt 26:14- 27:66; Psa 31:9-16

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

Early in my ministry at Trinity Ashland, just before Holy Week I found myself at the bedside of a parishioner who had been suffering for a long time from a terminal illness.  He was still lucid on occasion, but often floated between a painkiller-induced semi-sleep and the reenactment of vivid memories that seemed to me to be almost like waking dreams.  I did all the things that any of us can do in such situations, and a few that are a priest’s special calling, like granting absolution after hearing confession and celebrating Eucharist at his bedside.  I anointed him with oil and prayed.  I sang to him, held his hand, and listened to him recount stories from his long courtship and short marriage.  On the last day I saw him, I asked him what he wanted me to do that day.  He seemed a bit more withdrawn than usual, and was clearly close to death.  He smiled and replied simply, “Just be with me.” 

 

“Just be with me.”  This is the voice of basic human need.  It doesn’t demand that we fix anything, figure anything out, or make anything right.  It just asks for companionship, for being present, for mutual sharing of joy and sorrow.  Joys thus shared are multiplied; sorrows thus shared are made lighter. 

 

“Just be with me.”  It is a call we hear from friends, siblings, co-workers, neighbors, children.  Sometimes it is not—and cannot be—put into words, but is there all the same.  Our pride, or our fear, or our need to establish our own personality and life sometimes prevent us from phrasing the words.  But the appeal is the same regardless:  A parent suffering through the rough times of an adolescent or young adult child; a spouse suffering through the illness and final decline of their partner: “Just be with me.” 

 

During Lent every year, I have had the experience of hearing confessions and giving quite a bit of pastoral counseling.  Hearing a person’s private demons, fears, and regrets and then reassuring them of God’s love and pardon is one of the many ways we have of being present, of responding to the call, expressed or left unsaid, “Just be with me.” 

 

Hearing confession can be hard on a priest.  When someone shares their pain and you are truly present for them, you feel pain.  When you see their anguish, you feel anguish.  You share in their suffering, take on some of their pain.   

 

This has made me have a different perspective on what it means to be present, to have compassion, to love, and to be a channel of God’s grace.  It involves sacrifice and going through pain along with someone. 

 

Sacrifice, you see, is not about doing some ritual or act to placate an angry deity or drive away impurity or guilt.  It is not about proving to God or anyone else by some action that you somehow are worthy of forgiveness.  Sacrifice is about giving up, letting go.  It is about sharing yourself and what is yours with someone else, whether God or one of your fellow creatures, and letting that other person share with you, whether a meal, a feeling, or an experience.    

 

Love is not about having your way or being in control. 

 

Love is about being vulnerable, seeking the good and the will of the beloved.  Love is about being present for the beloved, about responding to his or her call, “Just be with me.”  Love is by its very nature sacrificial.  

 

Being a channel of God’s grace, or God’s love, is not about forcing conformity to some conception we have of God or of God’s will.  It is about opening oneself to God’s grace, to God’s one-way and totally undeserved love, and gently, lovingly, passing such love on to others.  It is about letting go and letting God work God’s love in God’s way and on God’s schedule. 

 

Today is Palm Sunday, the Sunday of the Passion.  The word passion comes from the Latin word meaning suffering, and the Gospel today is Matthew’s retelling of Jesus’ sufferings. 

 

But in a real sense, this is the Sunday of the Compassion.  These stories about Jesus’ sufferings are about Jesus suffering along with us, being one among us, fully present with us, and sharing our common lot of living in a world of pain, brokenness, fear, death, and apparent meaninglessness. 

 

The story that we will hear next week tells of the first Easter, when all such pain, brokenness, fear, death, and meaninglessness were put to flight.  Easter led the earliest Christians to see in Jesus the human face of God.  This led them to see in the Cross something far beyond a simple case of profound and deadly injustice and all-too-typical human suffering.  

 

Easter redeemed the Cross for the early Christians. It turned a Roman instrument of torture and execution into something with far deeper and broader meaning.  From the beginning, Christians have seen the death of Christ on the cross as something that changes everything.   St. Paul, writing just a couple of decades after Jesus’ death, writes, “For I delivered to you as of first importance the tradition that I also received: that Christ died for our sins … was buried, … was raised on the third day … and then appeared…” (1 Cor. 15:3-5).  “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, no longer counting against them their over-stepping of bounds, but rather giving to us what it is that reconciliation really means” (2 Cor. 5:19).  “[Through Christ] God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20). 

 

When we hear such things as “Jesus died for us,” “Jesus was a sacrifice for our sins,” “By his wounds we are reconciled, and by his stripes we are healed,” or even, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the Sin of the World,” we often understand these as if they were saying “Christ died on the cross to pay for our sins, to suffer in our place the punishment we deserve for our own misdoings.”  

 

This doctrine of transferred punishment is a relatively recent innovation in Christian thinking, first expressed as such around the year 1100 by St. Anselm of Canterbury when he answered the question “Why did God become Man?” with “because social inferiors cannot pay the debts of honor the owe to superiors; only someone of the same rank can do that.”  This idea of satisfying the honor of an offended liege lord grew into the idea the payment of a forensic penalty by someone else, and became the most popular way Western Christians understood the atonement only after the Renaissance.   This way of thinking expresses well the sense of relief and deep gratitude we experience when we realize that Jesus, indeed, died for us and as a result all will be well. 

 

But it is based on a way of understanding God that Jesus himself would have been uncomfortable with:  an angry Deity who demands violence and blood to make things right.    But Jesus taught again and again that God is a loving Parent, a God who sends the blessings of rain and sunshine on both the righteous and the wicked, and who takes delight in the creation.

 

“The wrath of God” as an image does not describe the heart of God.  Rather, it expresses how our relationship with God feels when we are alienated from God.   The doctrine of transferred punishment is rooted in the idea of a Deity demanding to be placated, regardless of whether this demand is called “the justice of God” or “the wrath of God.”   To take this doctrine literally and use it as the central way of understanding the meaning of the Cross demeans the Cross and belittles God.   And this is so because it is not God, but human beings—flawed, imperfect human beings—who believe in the myth of redemptive violence, the lie that things can be made right simply through bloodshed and the infliction of pain.    God is not a divine schizophrenic child abuser.  God is a loving parent.  Jesus on the cross is not what God’s anger or legal claims to justice look like.  It is what God’s love looks like:  self-sacrificing, fully present, and moved by compassion alone.  

 

A fuller, more biblical understanding is found in today’s Epistle, where Paul is quoting from an early Christian hymn: 

 

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death--

even death on a cross.  (Phil. 2:5-9)

 

The image here is that of God emptying himself, humbling himself in the incarnation and taking on the human face in Jesus, and then further emptying himself and taking on not just all the pain and suffering it means to be human, but also taking on some of the worst of that, death, death on a cross.  In this, God is sitting along with us, answering our cry, “just be with me.”  God loves us, and loves us sacrificially, taking on himself our pain and suffering, our fear, our unknowing.  The passion of Christ is thus the compassion of God, the Deity’s sharing with us all the worst of what our lives as human beings can throw at us.    In this light, we see that Christ is our priest, our pastor, our parent, and our friend. 

 

In the passion story, there is a detail in the garden of Gethsemane:  Jesus asks his closest friends to go with him to pray.  In Matthew, he begs them, “watch with me.”  Jesus too asks us, “just be with me.”  "Take up your cross, and follow me," he says. 

 

We can be there for Jesus in the garden, and on the Cross, by being present to his children around us. Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said, “Suffering is nothing by itself. But suffering shared with the passion of Christ is a wonderful gift, the most beautiful gift, a token of love.”

Friends.   With the early saints I believe that Jesus died for us, and suffered for us on the Cross.  In this great token of love, God shows his solidarity with us, and manifests compassion.  The great resurrection of Christ from the dead redeems this pathetic Roman execution and makes it the emptying of God himself for us. 

 

Thanks be to God. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.

 

Life to the Dead (Lent 5A)

 

Life to the Dead
Homily delivered the Fifth Sunday of Lent (Lent 5A RCL)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
22 March 2026; 9:30 a.m. Said Holy Eucharist
Ascension Lutheran Church, Medford (Oregon)
Readings:  Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45; Psalm 130

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen. 

My wife and I had a major trial in our faith just after we were married while we just starting our own family. We had become friends with a young couple. After several years, they were finally able to get pregnant and had a beautiful little baby boy. After a month or so, though, it became apparent that sometime was wrong. He had been born with a genetic defect: the upper layers of his skin were not fully connected with the deeper layers. If you touched him slightly on the arm, it quickly would turn into a large blister, would easily burst and become infected. There was little that the doctors could do. Despite two months in intensive care, the baby’s body was covered with second-degree burns.  His parents were not allowed to touch him, so they could not even comfort him as he screamed his little life out in agony. During the ordeal, we prayed. Our friends prayed. And the baby suffered and slowly died.

It is not the only time in my life when I witnessed the unbearable, wondering if God existed at all, or if so, how he could be good and loving.   My mother-in-law, after a long life of hard work and joyful service, deserved, to our minds at least, the golden years with her children and grandchildren.  But cancer robbed her of that, and us of her.  My father, whose faith in God, love for others, and joy in living was such a sign for me as a young man of God’s love, also did not get what appeared his just reward.  Early-onset Alzheimer’s disease robbed him, bit by bit, of his personality and memory, and left his sweetheart, my mother, bereft and abandoned.  I think this is our common experience:  we all have times of great pain in our lives.  I am so sorry to hear that you lost a member of the church this week.  I express my deepest condolences to the Freeman family.  Greg’s loss is just not right, not right at all.     

Life can seem at times to be a string of scenes where God, if Good, seems absent or impotent, or if Almighty and ever-present, seems to be a monster.  There is no way to get our heads, let alone our hearts, around it.  Maybe the problem is the term “Almighty.”  A much better translation, I think, would be “All Nurturing.”  The point is not that God can do anything, but that there is no situation so bad that God cannot help. 

Just after my wife’s death 4 years ago, I read the book “The Faraway Nearby” by Rebecca Solnit.  In it Solnit notes that Hansen’s disease, what we normally call “leprosy,” is a disease caused by a bacillus.  Here’s the thing—the damage caused by the disease, the disfigurement, the loss of extremities, the gradual death of the body part by part, is not caused by the bacillus.  The bacillus attacks the nerves, and what happens is that the damaged nerves no longer feel pain. But pain is one of the ways we define the limits of our body: without it to warn us, we take hold of burning pains and don’t flinch away.  We stub our toes savagely and then don’t favor them and care for them.  And so the painless damaged parts, no longer felt or seen as part of ourselves, become infected and die.  Psychological pain is like physical pain in this; it helps define us precisely because it helps us recognize when things are not as they should be.  Pain is in part what defines us, and helps us care for ourselves.  It’s a package deal—pleasure and pain, joy or horror.  We mustn’t blame God for this.  It’s just how our species evolved. I think it’s what God intended in creating us.       

From the beginning, people of faith have had to deal with unfulfilled hope, and apparent abandonment.  In today’s Gospel, both Mary and Martha separately confront Jesus about his delay in responding to their plea to come and help their brother Lazarus: “If you had been here, he would not have died.”  When Martha asks it, she adds hopefully “Even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” She does not dare ask him to raise her brother from the dead; she has already been disappointed enough in Jesus.  Jesus’s answer, “Your brother will rise again,” draws an ironic, almost bitter reply from Martha, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection—on the last day!” She leaves unsaid what she is feeling, “But that doesn’t do us much good here and now, does it?” 

Jesus replies, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She replies, timidly, “Yes, Lord, I believe”—not that her brother will come forth again—but “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”  She trusts Jesus, but is too beaten down by grief to hope for anything concrete for her brother.  

When Mary in her turn confronts Jesus about his delay and lack of help, she is reduced to weeping.  Jesus does not reply.  Like all who truly love, he is content to be silent and yet wholly present with the beloved.  Observing the scene of bitter grief he himself is deeply moved.  The Greek says simply “his insides were put into turmoil.”  And when they show him the place where the body lies, he begins weeping.

So the bystanders say, “See how he loved him!” But others take it as an occasion to doubt Jesus: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

When confronted with horror, we respond with despair, or sometimes with what seems to be unwarranted persevering trust.  At other times we blame others, questioning their motives or abilities.  All these responses are seen in this story of bitter disappointment and loss.

But then in the story, Jesus performs a sign pointing to the mystery of God being present here in Jesus, this Jesus who weeps and suffers alongside us. It is his last great sign before the cross and its inevitable sequel: coming forth victorious from the tomb. 

He raises from the dead his friend Lazarus, something that Martha hoped for, but was afraid to ask.  He raises him not to life eternal and transformed.  Remember that Martha specifically said she would not be comforted by Lazarus’ resurrection on the last day.  She wanted her brother back here and now, with things close to as they were before the grim visitor Death had come calling.  Jesus gives Martha and Mary what they want, and brings Lazarus back from the grave to this mortal life.

The author of the Gospel of John tells us: “...these things are written so that you may come to trust that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through ftrust in him you may have life” (John 20:31).  As this story tells us, it matters little whether it is life here and now or life on the last day. 

In Dostoyevsky’s great novel Crime and Punishment, this story plays a central role.  Young radical Raskolnikov has committed a murder and theft to even, as he thinks, the score of social injustice. But he suffers from guilt and self-loathing from it.  He meets a young sex-worker, Sonya, forced into the dehumanizing trade to feed her younger siblings.  She herself once suffered from guilt and self-loathing.  At the main turning point in the novel, she tells Raskolnikov what changed her: this story from John’s Gospel. She reads it to him. It is hard for her. Her voice breaks several times, she pauses and stammers, but she reads the whole luminous tale. 

 

When Jesus says, “Whoever believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” Sonya draws a painful breath, and reads on, in her own voice “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who should come into the world.”  The story changes Raskolnikov’s heart.  He begins the long hard process of regaining his own humanity. In the end, there is redemption and joy, both for him and Sonya, who accompanies him to Siberia to help him through his penal exile.

When Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, he leaves the deed unfinished.  Lazarus comes forth, but still bound by his funeral wrappings.  Jesus tells Mary and Martha to untie the burial cloths, to “unbind him.”    That is how it is with us: We, though alive back from the dead, remain bound and paralyzed by the grief and disappointment we have felt. Jesus tells us to unbind each other, to complete the miracle.  Sonya goes to Siberia with Raskolnikov, we assist one another in this ordeal.  We share in being present for each other, sometimes just being there silently with our beloved, and weeping along with them.  

Beloved, I have known the healing and strength of Jesus.  I have seen what can only be called him giving life to the dead.  I saw it in my own life four years ago: crushed by the death of my wife and retirement, bereft of feeling and a sense of who I was, and unable to feel, love, or be fully live again.  And with Martha, and with Sonya, I said with all my heart, “Yes, Lord Jesus. I trust you.  I believe, I give my heart to you. Show me how to move forward, how to regain life.” I started singing on chorale groups that made my heart wake up.  I started dating and found someone I loved dearly to whom I am now married.   Life to the dead. 

Beloved, we are going to get safe and sound through this messy, cruel, but all the same glorious life.  In fear and anxiety, we will find Jesus mighty to save, and always at our side in whatever we have to go through.  In illness, mourning, and even in death, we will see that the way of the Cross is the way of light and life.  As St. Julian of Norwich taught, all will be well, all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well. 

 

In the name of God, Amen.