After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." John 20:20-21

I don’t know about you, but I am struck over and over again how rushed and hurried and stressful life in New Jersey can be.  I had occasion on Friday and Saturday to be driving on Route 18 and Route 1 in East Brunswick.  While the traffic was not at a standstill, it was very heavy, it moved at about forty miles per hour, and there were cars continually darting in and out between lanes, and entering and exiting from the stores and businesses that crowd the sides of the road.

Now it could have been any number of roads – Route 22; 287 can get very backed up; lots of people would say that 78 was their least favorite road, or maybe the Parkway.  And then for those who commute by train there are all the headaches of making connections and allowing for travel time from home to the station, and from Penn Station or Hoboken to your place of work.

And if you have school age children, those after school and weekend hours can be one long slog in the car from school to sports, to dance or music, to a play date, to a dentist appointment to Shop Rite, to Scouts and that’s all before you even get home.

Just from our physical surroundings and the activities we all have to go through every day, most of us live lives that are very stressful – not to mention personal, family or work-related stress.

Dealing with all that stress – and what I’ve mentioned is only a small portion of the stress-load we carry – dealing with all that stress can be a burden, and a worry, and create a joyless turmoil within us, and sometimes between us and other people. And certainly doctors have been saying for a while now that too much stress is not good for us; we have to find a way to let it go.

So what happens when Jesus shows up in the middle of all that stress?

We heard in John’s Gospel this morning the story of the disciples who were gathered together on the evening of Easter day, still in fear and confusion about what had actually happened to Jesus and to them.  They had heard from Mary Magdalene, and Peter, and John about the empty tomb, and Mary then reported her encounter with the Risen Lord, but it was hard to know what to do with all this new information – how to process it, how to make sense out of what they were hearing.  Did they even dare hope that the news what true?  And if it was true, what did it mean? The disciples even had the doors locked in case the Judean officials should try to arrest them, Jesus’ followers.

Into the middle of this fear and confusion, Jesus comes. The first thing he does is to bid the disciples to be calm, to be at peace. “Peace be with you” Jesus says. He then identifies himself to them by showing them the wounds in his hands and feet – this is Jesus, the One who was crucified.  He is not a vision, and not a ghost, but Jesus - their teacher and rabbi and master - on the far side of death with a resurrection body that is recognizable, and yet different from our own.

Jesus comes to the disciples, bids them to be at peace, breathes the Holy Spirit upon them, and gives them a ministry and a responsibility to forgive sins – the disciples, and (by extension) us as we live and work in the world.

But their numbers are not complete; Thomas is not there, and so because he was not present for Jesus’ appearance, he won’t believe it.  In fact, Thomas gets himself all worked up over what he will and will not believe and what kind of proof he says he needs.

Sure enough, a week later, Jesus comes to the disciples again as they are gathered in the same room, locked away against intruders and the authorities. Thomas gets all the proof he needs, and again Jesus greets them with Peace.

The Peace that Jesus brings is the “peace of God which passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). It’s not a peace that comes from getting things all sorted out and organized, or that comes from having all our questions answered – as good as it is to have those things happen.  The Peace of God comes to us when we are willing to be open to the presence of Christ, sometimes when we stop insisting on God showing up or taking care of life on our time table, according to our priorities.

Often times our hearts are restless, or our minds churn, and our stress level rises.  We think that we should be able to control our surroundings, our events, or the reactions of others – but that is not the case most of the time – and so our stress level increases even more.

Of course there are many physical things we can do to help ourselves as we face stressful lives.  We can take a walk, or listen to music, or talk to a friend or spouse, enjoy a good laugh with someone we trust.  We can sit quietly and breathe slowly, lowering our heart rate – and hopefully our racing minds.

But none of these are, in and of themselves, the Peace that Jesus gives.  That Peace comes from knowing that God is in charge, that we don’t have to manage the whole world or even the whole neighborhood or even anyone else’s life. The Peace of God comes from knowing that we are beloved children of God, valued so highly that Christ gave his life for us. God’s Peace also comes through knowing that there is nothing we can do or say to drive God away, unless we retreat into our own hearts, and lock the door from the inside.  The Peace of God is an extension of God’s forgiveness and mercy and grace – it is a gift and a blessing to us.  And it is a gift that can accompany us wherever we go, whatever our circumstances are.  The Peace of Christ can dwell in our hearts and lives, even when circumstances are challenging, even when we face questions of ultimate meaning.

The Risen Christ brought Peace with him to the disciples on the evening of Easter Day, and on the next week – eight days later – and they continued to live in his peace, day by day. The Risen Christ brings Peace to us, as well. It is the Peace that comes from having lived through death and hell doing their worst, and God still triumphing.  The Peace of God is a gift of the Resurrection, a blessing that begins at this central fact of our faith, and then continues to surround us, envelope us, serves as the foundation beneath our feet.

“May the Peace of our Lord Jesus Christ bless you and keep you this day, now and always.”  Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Second Sunday of Easter
April 7, 2013

The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”   Luke 24:5

 Have any of you ever lived through a construction project?  If so, you’ll know all about the mess, the disruption, the excitement, the planning…the waiting…. the decisions to be made, the disruption… the waiting… and the satisfaction and happiness of finally seeing your plans come to fruition.

In mid-November, just as we all began to climb out of the hole that was Hurricane Sandy, All Saints’ started the construction phase of our new Parish House addition.  You all saw it as you walked from your car to the Church this morning.  The main feature of that project is the wheel-chair lift that will make that building handicapped-accessible on all levels, not just for us, but for all our community neighbors who use the Parish House in so many different ways.

And long about the third week in February, just after Lent started, I began to say to myself that the construction project was my Lenten discipline this year! It took time, energy and attention – as much as if I were taking on extra prayer time or exercise or giving up alcohol or sweets.

But all the aspects of this construction, including the parking lot re-paving that is   still to come, are necessary if we as a parish, All Saints’ Church, are going to fulfill our mission to broaden and deepen our hospitality to the wider community; to provide a place where people can come together, connect with each other, serve their neighbors – all in the embrace of God’s love. 

We started with a hope and a vision, and bit by bit it is becoming reality – thanks, of course, to all of our contributors, large and small, to both parts of the project.  But once the building is finished, the wheel-chair lift is installed, the last coat of paint goes on and the parking lot is re-paved, we are not finished.  Indeed, the real work will have only begun as we follow God’s lead in being a community of faith in Christ that serves our neighbors; as we deepen and develop the mission God has given us.

So far, so good.  But has the preacher forgotten to look at the calendar?  What does any of this have to do with Easter?  You did come for Easter worship, right? Well let’s reflect together on the Easter story as Luke has told it to us this morning.

It’s the crack of dawn Sunday morning, the first workday of the week, first-light after the Passover Sabbath. The women who had been part of Jesus’ circle ever since the days of the ministry in Galilee, the women who had helped to support his work out of their own financial means, had gone to the place where Jesus’ body had been hastily laid in a borrowed grave. Everyone had left to be home in time for the beginning of Shabbat on Friday at sundown. 

So at cockcrow on Sunday the women came back to finish the work – wrapping spices into the grave-clothes.  It was the very least that they could do in the face of their world having been shattered by the horrific events of Good Friday, when the religious leaders colluded with the imperial authority, finding an opportunity in the offer of betrayal by one of Jesus’ own. Sometimes that’s all you can do in the face of tragedy – show up, be together, perform a simple and tangible task, take comfort in an age-old ritual.

The women went to the tomb, in a state of mourning, and they found the huge stone rolled away from the cave’s entrance and Jesus’ body missing.  They must have been in shock; and then to make it worse, angels appeared to the women and chided them for looking for the living among the dead.  Then the angels reminded them of what Jesus had said all along about his coming suffering and death and eventual resurrection. 

Of course when the women, and the other disciples had heard these things originally, they must have puzzled over them, couldn’t make sense of them, couldn’t really take the words in.  Can you blame them? 

Resurrection in Judaism in the couple of centuries before Jesus was understood to be what God would do for all the righteous dead – a great big large-scale event at some point in the mystery of God’s own time. It meant that somehow, nothing of goodness that God had created would be lost to God. Nobody knew quite how, but God’s goodness and faithfulness would win out in the end.  What the women and the other disciples did not expect, what no one expected, is that resurrection would start with one person – and so Jesus’ words fell into the abyss of incomprehension.

But once the women at the tomb heard the angels’ message, they remembered what Jesus had said, it started to dawn on them that something new and wonderful had happened, that not only had Jesus risen from the dead, but that maybe God had defeated death and that the new creation of resurrection had begun. I’m sure that Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women didn’t have the words for all of this – at least not right away.  They must have had feelings, images, ideas, a powerful sense of God’s triumph and joy; and that was more than enough to send them running back to the inner circle with the news. 

But Luke tells us the men thought it an “idle tale” – more like, “What are you, nuts?”  Women in the ancient world were not legally considered reliable witnesses, so no one believed them – although Peter finally went to the grave and saw the empty tomb for himself. Once again, can you blame them? 

God was doing a very new thing – or at least doing it in a very unexpected way. When Jesus rose from the dead it didn’t just mean that he had had a near-death experience, or had been resuscitated (like Lazarus).  In Jesus, God acted to break the back of sin and death; it could no longer have ultimate hold over God’s people – the whole human race. Jesus had taken into himself – God’s very self – pain, violence, betrayal, suffering, fear, abandonment and death and come out the other side. 

And the on the other side was a new creation, a whole new kind of body and existence that took the matter and the energy of Jesus’ earthly body and transformed it, made it completely new, full of the power of heaven.  Of course it was hard for the disciples to take all this in.  Of course it’s hard for us to take it all in.  But faith in Christ is exactly that – faith, trust, giving our hearts – sometimes even before we give our minds.

 Jesus rose from death and the grave on Easter so that we, too, might live in that place of new creation – not just for ourselves, but for the world God has made.  Our most basic prayer is the one Jesus taught us, in which we pray “thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven;” and heaven – God’s realm – is to infuse and transform this world, as well as being the true reality of life after death. 

God’s kingdom, God’s realm, the new creation, begins in the Resurrection of Jesus and spreads out from there, until in the mystery of God’s time it will be full and complete – God’s original vision and plan for all that he made. That first Easter was the start of something new, and as the disciples began to take it all in, and began to live in the power of God’s love, and began to allow themselves to be changed – God was able to use them – not just to carry the words of the Good News of Jesus to others, but to be themselves instruments and agents of God to heal, to teach, to witness to the power of God, (to paraphrase Gandhi) to be the change that God is making in the world.

And that’s what God calls us to, as well, each and every one of us.  God has made us with love, and for love: love for God and love for our neighbor.  It’s not that we can do these things on our own strength – or at least not very well.  But with the power of God that has defeated the ultimate stranglehold of  sin and death, we can do all things through Christ – who gives us new life and strength and courage and hope.

 And so Easter is not just about us and our relationship with God – as important as that is.  Easter is also about the way we live and work and pray to bring about hope and healing and change and goodness – God’s kingdom – in the world.  New life and new creation!

 Just like the Parish House project which began with a vision and a hope. It started becoming real when the first shovel went into the ground, even though we couldn’t really tell what the finished structure would look like; but it will only reach its true fulfillment once our community neighbors are being served by it.

In the same way, Jesus’ Resurrection was the beginning of God’s new creation, but we most often see it in fits and starts: forward movement here, a set-back there, seeming delays, and the waiting while new spiritual seeds germinate in the dark places of our culture.  Usually we can only see the outlines of its true and final shape by faith, but it has started, and it is real - God’s kingdom, the new creation, God’s great construction project. And our faith in Christ and the Resurrection will only be fully realized once the whole world is renewed by God – and in part because of our prayer and action.

At the first Easter God pressed the re-set button on the history of human-kind.  Every Easter is an opportunity for us to renew our relationship with him; to commit ourselves anew to live as followers of Jesus; to take up anew the mission to help, heal, restore God’s world; to live in faith and trust and joy and love in the power of God.  May the Resurrection be true and real in your life, each and every day.  Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Easter Day: The Sunday of the Resurrection
March 31, 2013

Jesus said, So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.  For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.  John 13:14-15

  What gets you down on your knees these days?  Do you wash the kitchen floor, vacuum under the sofa, repair the drain under a sink?  Maybe you plant seeds in the garden, or pull up weeds.  Maybe you attend to a small child when he or she is sick, or clean up after a beloved cat or dog? I hope that sometimes you get down on your knees in prayer – as long as your knees still work!

There are probably many things that cause us to get down on our knees, for one reason or another, but I bet that foot-washing is not one of them.

And yet – there it is, right at the center of tonight’s Gospel.  Jesus had gathered with the disciples, and he had a pretty good sense of what was coming next.  In fact, the way John relates the story, Jesus knows that his hour had come, time was up, and he wanted to leave his followers with a very clear example and symbol of who he was and who they should be.

So during the dinner party Jesus gets up, takes off his outer clothing, and wraps himself in a towel, just like any household servant of first-century Palestine would do. And then he proceeds to take up a basin and a pitcher of water and wash the disciples’ feet.

You probably know what it’s like in the summer time if you wear sandals – your feet feel cool and comfortable, but boy, do they get dirty! Well, it was the same thing in Jesus’ day, and the accepted standard of hospitality was that when a visitor arrived for a meal, the guest’s feet would be washed of the street dust and dirt.  And if there was household help, washing feet was a servant’s job.

It was a shocking thing to see the leader, the revered rabbi, washing feet like a common servant.  I am sure the disciples were whispering amongst themselves: “This is too weird; what does he think he’s doing?!”  It was finally Peter who, as usual, burst out with what everyone else was thinking:   “Master, you wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You don’t understand now what I’m doing, but it will be clear enough to you later.” Peter persisted, “You’re not going to wash my feet—ever!” Jesus said, “If I don’t wash you, you can’t be part of what I’m doing.” “Master!” said Peter. “Not only my feet, then. Wash my hands! Wash my head!”

Peter couldn’t stand the idea of his leader and friend, the one whom he had identified as Messiah, could act like a common servant. And then Jesus explained the inner meaning of his action: “If you’ve had a bath in the morning, you only need your feet washed now and you’re clean from head to toe. My concern, you understand, is holiness, not hygiene.”  And he went on to make it clear to them that if  they claimed Jesus as “teacher” and “master” then they had to follow his example, to live life according to Jesus’ pattern.

Jesus was giving them a new vocation, or at least finally making it clear and explicit, in these last hours before his arrest and trial and death. The vocation of the disciples was to live a life of service to others, based on their love and loyalty for Jesus, strengthened by their love for one another. 

We had flashes of Jesus’ humility on Palm Sunday when he rode a donkey into Jerusalem – a common, humble animal, and when we heard the reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians when he quoted the words of a hymn: “…though he was in the form of God, [Christ] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross.”

The new vocation that Jesus gave to the disciples and to us is that we are to be servants – not subservient – but servants to those for whom Christ died, all those whom he loves, especially to those who are least able to help themselves: the poor, the sick, the lonely, the powerless, the outcast, the lesser-than  And we are to do this with love, with compassion, because really (if we look into our heart-of-hearts) we know that we have all been in that place of need whether physically, emotionally or spiritually.  Not one of us is exempt from it. And so Jesus calls us to be servants on his behalf, in the world. 

In the Church, it is the deacon who symbolizes this, and tonight I am remembering our former Deacon Bill Bailey who embodied this so well, right up to a few months before his death earlier this month.  And I know that Bill would say that he was merely showing the way for others, that he would not have succeeded in his ministry if others hadn’t learned from him a little more deeply what it means to serve, and to be Church, in and for and on behalf of the world.  The ceremony of foot-washing which symbolizes servant-hood was always Bill’s favorite part of Maundy Thursday liturgy, and I know he was a little disappointed that we did not do that here at All Saints’.

Our vocation to be servants get lived out on at least two different levels – the level of our individual actions in our work and families, and the level of what we do together as a parish.  That’s what has driven our ministry of community hospitality; it’s why we open our buildings to so many groups in our neighborhood; it’s why we host so many AA meetings each week; it’s why we collect food for the pantry in Dover; it’s why we endeavor to welcome anyone and everyone who is looking for a spiritual home, a community of connection to God.  It’s all part of our vocation as servants for Christ’s sake. 

But even as we are engaged in all this work and ministry and hospitality, Jesus bids us to gather at his Table – to be fed, strengthened, renewed, nourished – not just for our well-being or spiritual satisfaction, but so that we can be the Body of Christ in the world, fed by the Body and Blood of the Lord.  We gather for worship, we lift up the cares and concerns of our hearts and our neighbors, we are fed by Christ and then sent out to be who and what we are, only to return and begin the process all over again.

Towel and table, invitation and dismissal, bread and work, prayer in sacrament and action – it’s all part of this night, and part of each and every day that we live as Jesus’ followers, servants and friends.  Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Maundy Thursday
March 28, 2013