Here we are, the Sunday after Easter, which is really the second of seven Sundays of Easter. This is a lot like the disciples and women being holed up wherever it was. There aren’t as many of us as there were last week. We are exhausted after the hectic, 40-day, Lenten wilderness journey. There was the thought of foot-washing and the baffling action of Jesus breaking bread, passing it around with a cup of wine, and calling them his body and blood. Then there was the drowsy nighttime trek to pray in the garden which was interrupted by armed temple guards, the running away in the overnight cold, the dawn trial, and the high noon crucifixion.
The introverts among us have been overwhelmed by having to meet all the faces at the cross. Even for extroverts that was an emotionally draining experience. We were done in by the 7 a.m. first service of Easter. We overdosed on hard-boiled eggs and chocolate rabbits. We made ourselves hoarse shouting “Alleluias” at the mid-morning worship and the evening vespers. And now we don’t know what to think. We are as foggy and dazed and put out as Thomas. And now, after getting to his “My Lord and my God,” we find out we have got to celebrate another six weeks. We can’t live at this pace. Is this eternal life worth all this?
Martin Luther claimed that for every church that God built, the devil built a chapel along side. The reality is that since the first God-focused church was built, the devil’s chapel has grown so large and tall that has been able send its choir on the road so that his siren song is sung everywhere. It is not a song of “alleluias” or “glorias” or “hosannas.” The tune the devil loves to hear is the discordant sound of a million voices all singing their own song – no harmony, no melody, no chorus – only a din of solos.
This “song” which the devil so loves to hear has only one rule of composition: The first person singular is all there is. There is no first person plural (“we”) in the devil’s chorus, no third person singular (“she” or “he”) to be concerned with, no third person plural (“they”) to consider. Everything and everyone is intently focused on “I,” to the exclusion of all else.
Ulysses S. Grant once admitted, “I only know two tunes – one is “Yankee Doodle,” and the other isn’t.” Increasingly in our country (and the world as well), we know only two tunes – one is "The ‘I’ Song,” and the other isn’t.
Everyone who is busily belting out this song of self-love, this “I” song doesn’t have the other song – God’s song. For them God doesn’t exist, at least not in the way that Jesus wants us to know God. Rather it seems that there is no God except the exalted “I,” nothing higher than oneself, nothing but oneself. The Earl of Gurney, in Peter Barnes’ play The Ruling Class, when asked how he knew he was God, replied, “Simple. When I pray to him, I find I’m talking to myself.” (1) The existence of some higher authority outside the self is seen to be meaningless because the world of the self is wholly self-contained. We live “The World According to Me.” No one else enters it, no one else leaves it. “Others” are perceived as bothersome, burdensome or in-the-way baggage. Just like when someone photo-bombs a picture a person is trying to take, just like on live television sports when the crowd behind the commentators’ desk hold up signs and waves to get attention.
The “I” song is being sung louder than ever. Just listen to the current political rhetoric of every candidate running for office at any level: “‘I’ this,” and “‘I’ that”; “‘I’ will this,” and “‘I’ won’t that.” And the voters all ask, “What is in it for me? Who’s got the best deal.”
The reality of Easter is that there is no “I” in it. Easter requires a community. Jesus told Mary, “Go and tell the disciples.” The disciples stick together in the hours, days, and weeks after the crucifixion and resurrection. In today’s gospel reading, they are all assembled except for Thomas. He comes the next time around. In next week’s reading, they are fishing on the lake shore. The disciples are a “they,” not an “I.”
Peter makes that very clear in his response to the flabbergasted, frustrated, and enraged temple leaders.
“We must obey God rather than humans! The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead—whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God has exalted Jesus to his right side as leader and savior so that he could enable Israel to change its heart and life and to find forgiveness for sins. We are witnesses of such things, as is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” (Emphasis added.)We like Peter putting the pompous religious authorities in their place. But there is also great discomfort. Each of us “I”s like to be right, like to sing our “I” song, like not to be challenged, countered, or shown up to be wrong.
Peter made no claim of self-motivation; he presented no personal agenda. He and the apostles were not working outside the bounds of authority. They were working for the sake of the one absolute authority – God. The whole of the biblical witness is this: We are not our own. God is God, and we are not. God is the Absolute of all absolutes, the Absolute that makes relative all other absolutes. Especially all the “I”s.
Peter and the apostles were bold together. They were bold because they were empowered. They were bold because they were the church, brought together by the Holy Spirit and based on the singular good news that God had raised Christ from death. They were bold because they were witnesses to the before and to the after of God’s saving work. They were bold.
Most of us today are less than bold. The boldness the apostles displayed had nothing to do with physical strength or consistent energy levels. Their boldness had to do with spiritual strength. If they had sung the “I” song, they would have turned tail and run quickly away. But they didn’t. They sang God’s song and so they rejoiced because “they had been regarded as worthy to suffer disgrace for the sake of the name.” That is why they continued to teach and proclaim in both the temple and in private homes the good news that Jesus was the Christ.
Most of us were raised in the age when we went to places to get things. And that included going “to” church. We went to church to get God, to get inoculated against sin, to get a patina of respectability. The apostles didn’t go “to” church. They were the church. Wherever they were, the good news was present and was proclaimed. That’s the story of the Book of Acts – the apostles and Paul, Silas, Barnabas and others living out the good news of the resurrection of Christ wherever they were. And they were privileged to be abused because of it.
When we were baptized the name of Christ was added to our name. That is because we were baptized – changed through the experience of water – into the death and into the resurrection of Christ. Therefore, we don’t go to get the gospel. We are the gospel – we the community of believers in this time and place as well as in every time and every place.
Our message is simple: Jesus Christ is Lord. He is the Lord of the whole world. He sings God’s song. There is no “I” in Easter. Easter is about all of us together boldly living the gospel that transforms the world one person at a time, whether they are native or immigrant, male or female, young or old, widowed, orphaned, single, married, red, white, yellow, black, green or purple, rich or poor, saintly appearing or overtly sinning. Easter is about every “they” we can imagine and not about our “I.”
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
General Resource: “The Devil’s I,” Homiletics, April 23, 1995; http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=2433.
(1) Barnes, Plays: One (London: Methuen Drama, 1989), 26.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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