“The Wounds of Another” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on April 18, 2021. You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 24:15.
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John 20:19-31
19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
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On this third Sunday in the Easter season, we find ourselves hiding away with the disciples behind locked doors, who are fearing for their lives, as they believe the political and religious authorities would do to them what they had done to their leader just days before.
Last week on Holy Humor Sunday, we switched over to a part of the Easter story as told in the Gospel of Luke, but today, we are directly continuing the story that we heard two weeks ago on Easter Sunday, according to the Gospel of John.
Quick refresher: On Easter Sunday, from the Gospel of John in the 20th chapter, we read that Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the disciple whom Jesus loved went to the tomb to see that the giant stone enclosing the body of Jesus in the tomb had been removed. While the two male disciples then fled back to their homes, Mary stayed at the tomb weeping. It was then that the resurrected Christ revealed himself to her. Following this revelation, Mary runs to the disciples and boldly declares that she has seen the Lord!
So first let’s give it up for Mary for being the very first preacher of the resurrection! But what do the disciples do with her message? Well, in fear, they lock it away. They are not running through the streets bolding proclaiming the good news nor are they dancing and celebrating the resurrection. The stay in their homes; in their safety; doors shut tight.
But of course Jesus see this as a perfect and holy opportunity to appear to the disciples in their fear and distress; therefore to us in our own fear and distress as a part of our shared humanity with the disciples.
In our passage today, Jesus appears before the disciples, in full body and flesh, wounds and all, while simultaneously being able to move through locked doors. He miraculously does both as he appears to them, showing them his wounds, breathing the Spirit upon them, and sending them forth to go out in the world to be the preachers of the good news! They are made free from what burdens and confines them!
We know a little bit about confinement, don’t we? It’s hard to believe we “celebrated” our second anniversary of not worshipping within the church walls on Easter Sunday. We did not have a thousand nor a hundred nor even a single individual worship the risen Christ in the sanctuary or the Fellowship Hall or the Chapel these past two Easters. Many of us, when hearing the message of the resurrection, this year and last year, went back to our homes, locked the doors, and hid ourselves away. Well, truthfully, the majority of us didn’t even need to go back to our homes. We just stayed there, doors already locked. We didn’t go out sharing the good news with others at restaurants or at the homes of our relatives. We didn’t travel. We just stayed home! We actually really resonate with the disciples here, don’t we?
Now I get it! Our own personal confinements over the various stages of this pandemic were recommended and ordered to us out of the safety of ourselves and others! There has been great value to our confinements this past year, the greatest being the protection and survival of our neighbors and the people we love!
But if you are like me, I am tired of being confined within the walls of my home! “Unlock the doors, Jesus, breathe your Spirit on me, send me out!!”
Now, if any of you are friends with me on social media, you will find two things on my page in abundance. Number 1, articles that I find enlightening, challenging, and affirming, usually regarding one’s faith and identity. And Number 2, pictures of my many adventures! I’ve been told by several of you; you love my adventures; you think they look so fun and amazing and incredible, and let me tell you, they are! These adventures are also my pared back adventures. My year of COVID-19 safe adventures.
If you are like me, you have a running list of adventures that you are longing to do once the world fully opens up again. I want adventures here in Lehigh Valley and along the East Coast. I want to go to concerts and museums and stadiums! I want to sit on a plane or a train and just travel. I want to meet strangers again and have them become friends! I want to see my loved ones. All of them. I want to enjoy good food with good people! I want to do it all!
But also I know that my longing for freedom does not compare to the longing for freedom of our Black, Indigenous, and Asian neighbors.
They want to be free to drive to the store without the fear of being pulled over. They want to be free to ride public transit or go for a run through the neighborhood. They want to be free to dance or to play in the park or to eat snacks in public. They want to be able to go to work and stay out after the sun goes down. They want to be free to breathe and to sleep. Because everything I just listed has been a death sentence for a person of color over the last few years. They just want to be free enough to live.
Maybe now we understand why the disciples, who feared for their lives, locked themselves away in their homes.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my call to ministry and the call of our community of faith and how I hope and pray that the two continue to be aligned with one another. I’ve been assigned to preach this Sunday for several weeks now, and I’ve been excited! Any opportunity to be in conversation with each of you through the Word of God is a gift I am grateful to have; please don’t let anything I say allude otherwise.
But when Duante Wright was killed during a traffic stop on Sunday, August 11th; after lament and anger over the death of another black man, or let’s be honest, a young man, almost still a boy; I couldn’t sleep because I knew this would now be the topic of my sermon the following week and that in my exhaustion, and something I’m a little ashamed of, for a moment, I felt so overwhelmed that once again my sermon would label me to some of us as the “radical, liberal, political pastor who focuses only on justice and never on the Gospel” like I’ve been labeled in the past.
And then when the bodycam footage of 13-year-old Adam Toledo was released and revealed that he was shot and killed while his empty hands were raised in the air for surrender, in my anger and lament, I knew the majority of our sermons here at FPCA and elsewhere are justice-focused right now because there are so many injustices in this world and because our God and the Gospel message calls us to do justice. As Presbyterians, our reformed understanding of Scripture, our theology as found in our Book of Confessions, and our membership responsibilities as found in the Book of Order calls each of us to do justice!
So why, even though the Bible, The Book of Confessions, and The Book of Order all call us to do justice, why are we resistant to embrace that sort of ministry?
And then it hit me. It’s found in our passage today. It’s because the wounds of our Black, Indigenous, and Asian neighbors are not our wounds as a predominantly white church. And therefore, because we cannot clearly see their wounds and because we have not experienced them for ourselves, we do not believe they are real!
We are like Thomas who says to the other disciples, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in Jesus’ hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe!”
But just because they are not our wounds doesn’t mean these wounds don’t exist. And just because we do not experience them for ourselves doesn’t mean we need to experience them for us to believe that they are real!
Remember what Jesus says back to Thomas after Jesus showed him his wounds, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Now any of us can go out and find a token Black, Indigenous, or Asian person who will say that there is no injustice against people of color and that racism and racist bias, discrimination, and hate isn’t real. Any of us could go find a person of color who might tell you that we shouldn’t see color at all and that the statements “Black Lives Matter” and “End Asian Hate” are racist.
But today, I urge all of us to do this. If we won’t listen to the majority of Black, Indigenous, and Asians lives, let’s at least listen to the Black, Indigenous, and Asian voices in our community of faith. We are a predominantly white church. We’re even more predominantly white in our English-speaking worship services. But we do have Black, Indigenous, and Asian members. And in my conversations with them, it is clear their wounds are real. They fear for the safety of themselves, their spouses, and their children, especially for their children.
I promise you; they won’t be the ones to tell you racism doesn’t exist. They won’t be the ones to tell you it is not a part of our responsibility as white Christians to dismantle systemic racism. They aren’t the ones complaining about our signs on our lawn and about this or any previous justice-focused, Gospel-filled sermon. Some of our members of color like some of us might be the ones questioning why haven’t we done more as a predominately white church or why haven’t we as a community of faith made a statement and stance about the increasing toxic hate toward Asian people in our country over the last year.
Did you know our church has an Anti-Racism Task force? The members are mostly white with a few members of color, or immediately related to people of color. It’s also almost all women with two lone men.
Did you know our Presbytery – Lehigh Presbytery – has an Anti-Racism Task Force? It’s four women, two who are black. So first, let’s give it up once again for women at our church and our presbytery who like Mary Magdalene who are the first preachers of the good news. Both task forces are among our most diverse teams in terms of one’s race…
And did you know our Presbytery has one historically black church – Washington Presbyterian Church in Reading – and one Korean Church – the Korean Church of Lehigh Valley in Whitehall? Their leaders have graciously reminded clergy and elders in presbytery meetings of our call to serve those on the margins on society, especially people of color who continue to be scarred with old and new wounds as discrimination, hate, and murders continue to happen to their siblings; their spouses, their children; their people!
Why oh why must the call to end white supremacy be placed on the shoulders of our neighbors of color when the systematic racism comes from white people like us?!
Why oh why must the wounds of Black, Indigenous, and Asian people be proven before we do something about it? And why oh why do we ignore them when they try to show these wounds to us?!
There is something really powerful when the risen Christ reveals himself to his disciples. He reveals that even following the resurrection, he still carries the wounds of his torture and death inflicted upon him from the violent crowd that killed him!
The wounds we inflicted throughout history to communities of color, things like stealing land and slavery and concentrations camps, are still carried by communities of color today! They manifest in the bias, discrimination, hate, and murders that continue today!
So if we are going to be like Thomas and doubt the existence of another because we haven’t see the wounds of that other, then at the very least we can be like Thomas and believe and embrace that other when they show us their wounds.
Because let’s be honest. Jesus was a lot more like Duante Wright or Adam Toledo than any of us. He was an innocent brown-skinned, Jewish man killed by the authoritative Church and State and a violent crowd. And a resurrected Christ was even more like them as he carried the wounds inflicted upon him by people in power, people like us.
Look, like many of you, I am seeking that next moment of freedom where I can go out, leave the walls of the coronavirus behind, and find a new adventure! But true freedom is found in the embracing of the resurrected Christ and the calling on his Spirit to be breathed upon us. And this Easter, we can embrace the resurrected Christ by embracing those whose experiences are most like his, wounds and all. And receiving the Spirit looks like us being sent out to be preachers of the Gospel, justice and all.
And so we go forth. Work to be done! Thanks be to God. Amen.
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