Sermons

Thomas is only asking for as much as everyone else – the women at the tomb, the eleven disciples – has had themselves. He wants to see the Lord wants to know with his own eyes and hands that Jesus is risen from the dead. So as we hear this passage again, I’m again not struck by Thomas’ disbelief.

Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death and to those in the tombs bestowing life. We are confronted by death every day on the news. From global wars to shootings in schools to complications with pregnancies. Easter doesn’t make those hurt any less. Easter doesn’t take away the reality that death surrounds us. Jesus died at the hands of sinners and Mary going to mourn is how she found the good news that he didn’t stay dead.

Jesus this evening has raised Lazarus. He’s predicted his own death. He knows its coming. Still he goes to pray that it might happen another way. That we might hear his message, that those who’ve followed him and heard him speaking clearly in the synagogues will love one another. But they don’t. We don’t.

God-made-flesh in Jesus joins us in our humanity so much that he joins us in death. While Jesus is feeling abandoned God stands in solidarity with those who die senseless deaths. While Isabel Andrade mourned the impending death of her daughter and granddaughter God was with her knowing the pain of losing a child.

“Before the Church hears about Jesus’ death we hear about God opening graves breathing life into long-dead bones with long-dead muscle, sinew, and skin. As we come to the end of Lent we hear about opening graves because that’s what Lent is about.”

Jesus is the living water who knows everything we’ve ever done and calls us still to the well of that living water… Fasting, the most well known practice, is done so that we’re ready to meet Jesus by the well, to meet him by the font at the Easter Vigil… Jesus has come to bring us and to be for us a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.

ReBorn Spiritual rebirth, Re-birth, Born again, Reborn, Reawakened, Found, or Redeemed all mean one thing, transformation. Simply put, we become believers in Jesus. We choose to reject the persuasion of others and Jesus becomes the influencer of our thoughts, words and actions in relationships and those we direct toward ourselves. It is a Calling, not

While we don’t face temptations exactly like Jesus faces here, we are tempted nonetheless. For some of us a few days into our Lenten fasts we’ve broken them. We may be tempted to fully count ourselves failures or tempted to just shrug it off as not having mattered anyway. While the lectionary fails spectacularly at showing Jesus being tempted in every way that we were, it nonetheless shows that Jesus faced temptations. The mundane, real-life, day-to-day temptations that we give in to or resist, Jesus faced too.