Sunday, 17 April 2016 Paul E. Hoffman
+The Fourth Sunday of Easter, Series C Seattle, WA
Luther Memorial Lutheran Church
The texts for this morning present us with four different scenes of confusion and discouragement.
The first is a deathbed scene for a beloved caregiver. Dorcas had been a lifeline for a group of widows in Joppa. Left behind by their husbands’ deaths, these women found a new sense of dignity and hope from this woman who cared. Her death was certainly emotionally challenging for each of them. But it was more than that. Once again these women were going to find themselves without a means of support, both emotionally and financially. They had been kicked to the curb once, and miraculously delivered by Dorcas. Now that she was dead, they feared the same sort of fate again.
Any deathbed scene is a scene of confusion and discouragement. But this one is particularly tough. It’s so confusing and discouraging, in fact, that it’s been immortalized in the Book of Acts, the first of four such scenes of confusion and discouragement in front of us today.
The second is from John’s Gospel. The scene is the temple in Jerusalem, the Feast of Dedication. Winter. It’s winter, all right: dark and discouraging, just like winter Seattle. And no Starbucks. This strange encounter between Jesus and the Jews takes place during Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights, so the darkness of the situation is exacerbated by the Lord of Light being in the middle of this dark time and dark conversation and everyone’s oblivion to who they have right there in front of them.
If you’re at all conflict avoidant, this scene probably makes you a little uncomfortable. The Jews are direct: If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly. And Jesus is equally direct in his response: I have told you and all the things I’ve done in your presence are evidence of who I am as well. But you don’t seem to be convinced. And then more conflict. Perhaps you can’t be convinced because you’re not the Godly people that you say you are. The Light of the World just made everything darker still. It’s a season of confusion and discouragement, no matter who you are in this brief encounter. This is not feel-good Scripture. I guarantee you, you’ve never seen this story captured in stained glass nor its terse conver-sation cross-stitched on a sampler in anyone’s office or dining room.
The third scene isn’t actually WRITTEN in the texts for today, but it’s very much alive in the church to and for each of these previous two were written. I can 100% guarantee you that the church of the late first century was every bit as discouraged and confused as the widows at Dorcas’ deathbed. Those who were emerging from Judaism and forming this new religion called “Christian” a generation after the resurrection were every bit as curious as those who walked with Jesus on the portico of the Temple. In fact, theirs was much the same question. Nuanced, perhaps, but much the same. How much longer will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.
Imagine what it was like for these men and women, the first of our ancestors in the faith. They had left families; many had turned over property to the community. They were ridiculed if not persecuted. The world around them was looking into the glass house of their new faith with amusement, disdain, and sometimes life-threatening hostility. These were dark times for new disciples, confusing and discouraging. Where was the One who had promised to return? What were they supposed to do next? Was it all just idle talk? Imagine what it was like for them.
It’s not so hard is it? To imagine it, I mean. Because here’s the fourth scene of confusion and discouragement that the Scriptures present to us this morning. Here. Right here. The world of Luther Memorial Lutheran Church, Seattle, WA, United State of America, planet earth.
The year is 2016, the day is bright and sunny. There is a sense in which things have never been better. Financially and materially speaking, most of us in this room are better off than our parents were, many of us better off than they could ever have imagined. We are, for the most part, surrounded by friends, secure in our future, by all visible measures the beautiful and the blessed.
But one does not have to scratch this veneer very deeply to find a different picture. Yep, you know the one I’m talking about. A picture of confusion and discouragement. I don’t know of many families that aren’t harboring some sort of dysfunctional secret: addiction, adultery, abuse… and those are just the A words. In the larger community of Seattle, we learned this week that we are the city with the third largest homeless population in America. The city of Boeing, Microsoft, Google, Starbucks, Amazon, and people dying under bridges. Hungry people come to our window day after day to collect a lunch of cheese crackers and Vienna sausage. Six blocks from my daughter’s apartment on Capital Hill a woman’s body was found dismembered and discarded in a recycling bin.
I’m not going to rehearse the larger issues that loom on the political, economic, and human rights horizons of the nation and the world. You know them too well already. The fourth scene the Scripture unveils is the scene of our very own lives. It is a scene of confusion and discouragement, is it not? Like the women in Joppa, we hold on to the shreds of tunics and clothes from the good old days, but death is all around us. We have heard the words and seen the works of the Risen One, and still we do not believe. Or at least we do not believe in ways that bring the witness of our faith alive to the confusing, discouraging, needy world around us.
There is a fifth scene in Scriptures today. It is a scene of promise and hope. Peter shows up to the bedside of Dorcas, and life is restored. The light of Christ shines in the darkness of discontent with a promise of never-ending presence. My sheep hear my voice and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; and no one will ever snatch them out of my hand. These are not a conditional promises. They are for all the people of God, for all time. They are words of promise and hope, words for people in times that are confusing and discouraging. Put differently, they are words for people just like us.
Even though we are people of God, carried in the wounded hands of the risen one, we have no magic wand. Tomorrow our city will still be plagued by homeless, we will reach through the office window with a gift of lunch for a few, terrorists will still threaten, and political chaos will be in the headlines. It will be discouraging and confusing.
But it will not be the last word. That word belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb. That word belongs to us, written in our hearts and signed upon our foreheads. And that word, that saving Word to a desperate world is ours to show and to tell.
In the name of the Father, and of the (+) Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.