1 Peter 1.3-9, John 20.19-31
This year our eldest son will turn 40, but back in the day - when he was five or six perhaps - he was a master at delaying bedtime. Just as we were trying to tuck him into bed he would come up with a range of intriguing and important questions which he felt we wouldn't be able to resist.
For instance one of his questions that I remember is, ‘Where is God?’ When we counteted with something like, ‘God is everywhere,’ he was ready with his next question, ‘If God is everywhere, why can't we see him?’
It's a good question, and it takes us straight to the heart of today's lectionary readings. That was exactly the question which Thomas posed to the other disciples about the risen Jesus on the First Easter Day, and which the writer of the First letter of Peter addresses too.
At Meriden we have been using a Lent liturgy which was written by the awarding winning poet and children's author Jan Dean. In her spare time she’s also a Church of England lay reader and she regularly leads the special ‘story services’ at her local parish church. Perhaps because of this, she's written a collection of prayers for all age worship during special seasons and festivals, and I suppose that's where our Lent liturgy comes from. Her prayer for Easter Day especially caught my attention.
We did some work with our local primary school in the run-up to Easter. We enacted several scenes from the Easter story. (I played the soldier who was at the cross when Jesus died and outside his tomb when his body disappeared.) Afterwards the leader of the organization which set up the visit, CrossTeach, gave the children a talk about the meaning of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. And it struck me on Easter Day that Jan Dean's prayer sums up what the leader should have said to the children. It would have been exactly on my son’s wavelength when he was at primary school.
Jan's prayer for Easter Day is short and simple, as we might expect from a children's author, but it goes to the heart of the message of Easter and of our lectionary readings today:
The Son of God, who gave himself upon a tree to put to an end forever our separateness from God, lives and reigns - victorious over death. Christ, our friend and brother, calls us to share in his heavenly glory.
Two sentences, written in relatively basic language but communicating some profound and mysterious truths; a little Easter creed summing up what we believe.
So what does Jan Dean mean when she talks about our separateness from God? This is precisely what our son wanted to explore at bedtime all those years ago. If God is all around us how come we end up feeling separate from him?
Ten years ago our younger son went to live in New Zealand for a time. We felt separated from him while he was there. Even during a short visit to see him, we spent part of our time on the South Island while he and his wife were working on the North Island. But we were never really truly separated from them, even by the great distance between us when we were at home in England, because he introduced us to WhatsApp and we spoke to him more often than we do now that they live 20 minutes away.
Even when we feel there is a great distance between us and God, God is actually living and moving within us. In that sense we are never truly separated from him at all. St Paul said that in him ‘we live and move and have our being’. The First Letter of Peter says that, even when we are in the deepest trouble, even when we feel that we are being tested by fire, we should understand that we ‘are being protected by the power of God’, who will make sure that we will have an imperishable inheritance in heaven. In that sense we can never be separated from God even when God feels far away. ‘Although you have not seen Jesus, and you do not see him now,’ says the writer, ‘You love him and you believe in him.’
But maybe there's another way of being separated from God. Even when we feel that God is close to us, and even when we love and believe in him and in Jesus his Son, we can still feel separated from God by a gulf of inadequacy as we fail to live up to the high ideals that the Gospel sets us.
This is one of the key principles of the Christian faith, and especially the Protestant version of Christianity. St Paul puts it succinctly in his letter to the Christians at Rome, ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’ which simply means that all of us have missed the target and fallen short of the Gospel Ideal. We all know in our heart of hearts that we can never live up completely to the ideals that we believe in. That is another way of describing our separateness from a holy and truthful God.
And that is where the cross comes into the Easter story. The God who meets Thomas, and overcomes his hesitation, is the Son of God who gave himself upon a tree to put an end forever to that separateness. Jesus emphasises the critical importance of the cross by drawing Thomas's attention to the wounds in his hands, feet and side.
God is not far away from us, on the other side of the world or in a heaven beyond reach of the terrible things going on here. He has been and remains part of all human experience. There is nothing that separates him from it. He was born. He has experienced the helplessness of a baby. He has worked for a living. He loved his family and friends. He experienced doubt and indecision himself in Gethsemane. And he died, as we do. In Jesus God completely immersed himself in human life.
When the Greeks finally reconquered the last bit of Greece from the Persian Empire, about 300 years before the time of Jesus, they caught the governor and his son trying to escape to modern day Turkey. The Greeks weren't inclined to be magnanimous in victory. Instead, with the utmost cruelty, they crucified the governor and then stoned his son to death in front of him while he was hanging on the cross. That's pretty nasty.
People have claimed that Jesus’death on the cross was the worst death anyone could endure, but that's not true. Many innocent people have suffered death in even more horrible circumstances. But when we couple his death with the suffering of God in watching him die we do close the distance between God's experience and that of the Persian governor. God has been in the thick of the action and in that sense he closed down the separateness between him and us. Although my five-year-old son found it hard to believe, wherever we are, and whatever is happening, God is always with us.
And in being victorious over death, and raising his Son from death, God is able to close down the separateness permanently, for even death cannot separate us from him. And he calls us to close down the distance between us by encouraging us to become friends and brothers of Jesus even when, unlike Thomas, we have not seen him for ourselves.
We don't have to believe any complicated theories to explain this, although there are plenty available to choose from. We’re simply asked to trust that God can, in multiple ways, overcome any separateness between us and Him by identifying completely with us and reaching out to us in our brokenness through his own brokenness on the cross.
The writer of First Peter says that, because of Easter, we can ‘rejoice with an indescribable joy’. John's Gospel says that we can receive the Holy Spirit and experience the deep peace of Christ dwelling within us. Jan Dean says that we are called by Christ, our friend and brother, to share in his heavenly glory.
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