Emmanuel Episcopal Greenwood
  • Home
  • WELCOME
  • About
    • About Us
    • Sign Up To Stay Connected
    • Calendar
    • Request a Name Tag
    • Directory and Database Update Form
    • Emmanuel Merch
    • The Grounds >
      • Ted Caplow Trail
      • Stations Of The Cross in Nature
      • Campus Map
    • Weddings, Baptisms & Funerals
  • Worship
    • Service Information
    • Children's Chapel
    • Music
    • Lent and Easter
    • Advent and Christmas
    • Sermons
    • Liturgical Calendar
    • What Episcopalians Believe
  • Ministries
    • Ministries and Groups
    • Scott House Community Outreach >
      • Raise the Roof for Scott House
    • Children and Youth
    • Sign Up To Serve
    • Endowment Board
  • HISTORY
    • Our History
    • Archdeacon Frederick W. Neve
    • Our Emmanuel Story
    • History of Rockfish Gap Food Pantry
  • Parish Life
    • Coffee Hour & Fellowship >
      • Instructions for Coffee Hour
    • Stewardship
    • Shrine Mont Parish Weekend >
      • Shrine Mont Camps
  • News
    • News & Service Links
  • GIVE
    • Pledge for 2025
    • Give Online
    • Stewardship

Sermon Blog
​

A reasonable facsimile of what was preached on Sunday: always a reflection on the Word, but never the final word.
Please note that the Rev. JT Thomas latest sermons are available by video on our You Tube channel. 
View Sermons on You Tube

Jesus Shows Up

4/18/2022

 
​Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
“But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”  The women did not believe what they had seen.  The men blew them off completely, thinking it was some sort of wishful thinking.  Not sure how that went for them.  Nobody used the word resurrection because it had not been invented yet…. Because such things don’t happen.  Dead people stay dead.  The whole tale is a little nuts.  Ridiculous!
 
These people lived in a world without AEDs, EKGs, and maps of the human genome.  But they knew what dead was.  They knew it happened when a person’s blood poured out of them.  They knew the pallid look of modeled flesh.  They knew how death smelled.  And Jesus was dead.  He had been cleaned, anointed with sweet smelling balm, wrapped in white, and placed in a stone sealed tomb.
 
We will hear the rest of the story in time.  Jesus shows up to a couple of sad sacks on the road to Emmaus.  Jesus shows up in a locked and guarded room, in the flesh, for Doubting Thomas and many others to see.  Jesus shows up and makes a fish breakfast for the disciples turned back to fishermen on the lake.  There are even more tales, but the central plot but they all share one central detail: Jesus shows up, and they do not recognize him at first.
 
In more time, the cockamamie story spreads, crazy talk many still think.  With none of the modern inconveniences the story continues to by word of mouth.  There are no printing presses, nothing beyond hand written scrolls and letters, and, of course, there is a 98% illiteracy rate with the two percent literates being folks who would like this story to go away.  Transportation happened on foot, by donkey, or in slow and frighteningly tiny ships of trade.  Most never traveled more than a fifty of sixty miles from where they were born.  There is no Twitter or Instagram.  How would Jesus tweet others? @Sonof God or @theRealJesus or, simply, @Savoir?
 
It took years for the story to get to Greece and Rome, told at great peril to the tellers, as sole allegiance to emperor types was mandated.  The fact that Jesus’ story survives is a miracle in and of itself.  The story’s wildly illogical plotline runs counter to reason, basic biology, and the survival of anyone telling it.
 
Over time, groups gather, feast, and celebrate Jesus showing up.  Others are moved to tell the story and live in particular ways in its light.  Christ followers gather to take council, establish a consistent written record, develop calendars and rites, and ritual.  Still later, people build soaring Cathedrals and tiny village churches.  Of course, the groups, being full of humans, bend and twist and coopt the message, missing the mark, and fitting their own needs for power and control.  When people get involved, faith, empire, and material stuff can get all twisted together in ways that do not resemble the basic and humble person and work of Jesus.
 
And still, in every generation from then to now, people have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus.  And here we are.  We may be here by obligation, arm twisting, sentimental attachment, curiosity, habit, and the promise of a great brunch, an world class egg hunt, and a larger than normal spread at coffee hour.  We may be here for reasons historic, affiliative, associative, or thoroughgoing, daily, big deal faith.  Nevertheless, we are here.  No scoffing is allowed because for this story to be told, divergent perspectives are necessary.  In the family of God, there are no guests, there are no right answers, no easy explanations.  We deal more in question marks than periods.  But why?
 
Through all of the illogical, biological, epistemological, legendary, and apparent impossibility, we are here because the story gets us.  Perhaps, it is because we would love for Jesus to show up, maybe as a blinding light, a voice from heaven, or mystic sign like the face of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the stump of the Emmanuel Oak would be nice.  What we seek tells us more about us than it does about Jesus.
 
But allow me to step out on a limb of the deep-rooted tree of life, in the faith I have deep in my bones.  Jesus is always showing up, as he says he will.  Here.  Now, in the intergenerational love we attempt to practice at Emmanuel (God with us).  In the bread we break and the cup we offer, not just at Eucharist, but at coffee, picnics, dinner parties, Bread Fund, and Disciple’s Kitchen.  Jesus shows up as we go, in the many hands that make things work here from ushers to Altar Guild, flower people, setter uppers and taker downers.  Jesus may be easier for me to name as showing up here, but this is just practice to see Jesus showing up out there, at the gas station, the grocery store, in the carpool and in the peace and quiet of the dawn.  From before our momentary birth and after our inevitable last breath, Jesus shows up.
 
Whether we see this as Jesus, God, Spirit, Higher Power, or Love, the showing up shows us clearly and simply that we belong in this world, and that we are being held by some Larger Force. In that, life feels okay and even good and right and purposeful. This is what it feels like to be “saved.” (paraphrased from Richard Rohr on salvation in Breathing Underwater).
  
Jesus’ Resurrection is an old story, told from many different perspectives even in our own sacred texts.  We cannot prove that and more than we can prove a parent’s love for our children, which is very real.  But something happened.  That something that has captured hearts, minds, imaginations, art, music, creativity, across all generations.  Somehow, we remain joyful, though we have considered all the facts.  We remain hopeful, though we have been disappointed often.  We love, and give, and love some more, because we find that in the end, love is the only permanence ever meet.
 
We are not here because the Resurrection happened.  We are here because Resurrection happens.  Look out!  The world will Easter up on us when we look for it.  Jesus shows up.  Amen.

Comments are closed.

    Author

    The Rev. John Thomas is Rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood

    Archives

    October 2024
    September 2024
    July 2024
    April 2024
    October 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019

    Categories

    All
    Marion Kanour

    RSS Feed

WELCOME
This is the table, not of the Church but of Jesus Christ. It is made ready for those who love God and who want to love God more.
So come, you who have much faith and you who have little, You who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time or ever before.
​You who have tried to follow and all of us who have failed. These are the gifts of God for the People of God.
Adapted from The Iona Community, Iona Abbey Worship Book, (Glasgow, UK: Wild Goose Publications, 2001), 53.

Telephone

540-456-6334

Email

[email protected]
7599 Rockfish Gap (Rt. 250 West) | P.O. Box 38 | Greenwood, VA 22943
​DIRECTIONS
  • Home
  • WELCOME
  • About
    • About Us
    • Sign Up To Stay Connected
    • Calendar
    • Request a Name Tag
    • Directory and Database Update Form
    • Emmanuel Merch
    • The Grounds >
      • Ted Caplow Trail
      • Stations Of The Cross in Nature
      • Campus Map
    • Weddings, Baptisms & Funerals
  • Worship
    • Service Information
    • Children's Chapel
    • Music
    • Lent and Easter
    • Advent and Christmas
    • Sermons
    • Liturgical Calendar
    • What Episcopalians Believe
  • Ministries
    • Ministries and Groups
    • Scott House Community Outreach >
      • Raise the Roof for Scott House
    • Children and Youth
    • Sign Up To Serve
    • Endowment Board
  • HISTORY
    • Our History
    • Archdeacon Frederick W. Neve
    • Our Emmanuel Story
    • History of Rockfish Gap Food Pantry
  • Parish Life
    • Coffee Hour & Fellowship >
      • Instructions for Coffee Hour
    • Stewardship
    • Shrine Mont Parish Weekend >
      • Shrine Mont Camps
  • News
    • News & Service Links
  • GIVE
    • Pledge for 2025
    • Give Online
    • Stewardship