During this Easter season, for our Second Reading, we have been hearing selections from the First Letter of John. This is not really a letter, but more of an exhortation to a community that is divided and in conflict. The content of the disagreement was the debate over the true nature of Jesus … was he human, or was he divine? Because of this disagreement the community was fractured and people were angry at each other. Leaders on both sides of the issue vied for followers. Thus, the purpose of the First Letter of John … whoever wrote it, and to whatever community that received it … the purpose was to proclaim the true faith: Jesus, the divine Christ, lived as a human being. In other words … Jesus was both human and divine.
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Easter Sunday at St. Cyprian’s was a glorious day! We celebrated the Resurrection with joyous music and beautiful flowers and wonderful fellowship. Yet Easter Sunday was also a significant day in the life of this particular congregation … last Sunday was the 115th anniversary of the consecration of this building. Today is the Second Sunday of our Easter Season, and every year on this Second Sunday of Easter we hear the story of Doubting Thomas from the gospel of John. I have lots of sermons about Doubting Thomas … good sermons … at least I think they are good … but I’m not going to preach this morning about Thomas … or about doubt. Instead, I want to preach about faith, community, justice and compassion. I want to focus on the passage from the Acts of the Apostle which describes the earliest Christian community, and I want to consider our particular community of faith … St. Cyprian’s … and its earliest history.
Happy Easter.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed! Alleluia! Happy Easter! Today we celebrate new life after death. We celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, and we celebrate THE Resurrection of new life after the deaths we know in our own lifetime. For several years I participated in the annual ecumenical Good Friday service at Memorial Presbyterian Church. The responsibility for preaching would be rotated amongst the clergy involved and one year the sermon was basically a verbal depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus. I never saw the Mel Gibson movie, The Passion, but this sermon was at least that gory, if not more so. The point of the sermon was that Jesus suffered greatly in his death, and the greater his suffering the more we faithful Christians are redeemed for our sins. This is the theology of “redemptive sacrifice.” But it is not the only theology of Good Friday. This is the “Other” Good Friday.
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October 2024
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