Easter is a triumphant reversal and vindication of Christ’s suffering and death, no question. But no Easter text begins triumphantly. In fact, Mark’s original chapter 16 cliffhanger ends with the urgent question of what will happen next. In today’s reading, we drop into that place of fear where Scripture left us last week. John 20:19-31 picks up with the disciples after they heard Mary Magdalene’s story of the empty tomb (John 20:1-2), after Peter and John ran to the scene and saw the empty linen cloths (v.6), after Mary shared her encounter with the risen Jesus with the group (v.18). Now, it is evening. The disciples wonder: If what they say is true, what will happen to us? Is this Messiah who we deserted and fled from going to enact payback? Are we going to be even more exposed? They lock the doors, and the risen Christ walks right through them and appears among them. Beyond just showing up, the risen Christ brings the disciples Pentecost. He offers the group peace (not fear or anxiety or disappointment) before breathing the Holy Spirit on them and sending them out from the room: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (v. 21-22). For a long time, I harbored a grudge, if that is possible, against the hymn “I, the Lord of Sea and Sky,” better known as “Here I Am, Lord” (GTG #69). To me, it represented all that is wrong in our decadent, self-indulgent 21st-century Christianity. We are much more interested in our personal call and feeling special than the work of Christian community, the life of discipleship. To me, a virtue of life together in Christ is that the movement becomes self-forgetful. It exists beyond mountaintop moments, which are wonderful but fleeting. Yet, like many things in life and in the life of faith, my attitude has (somewhat) changed toward “Here I am, Lord.” On my desk, amid lists and calendars and paperwork and urgent messages, I keep a couple of reminders about what I believe to be the heart of ministry and discipleship. One of these mementos is a quotation from Karl Barth in 1948: “One never is a Christian, one can only become one again and again: in the evening of each day, somewhat ashamed about one’s Christianity of the day just over, and in the morning of each new day, glad that one may dare to be one all over again, doing so with solace, with one’s fellow humanity, with hope, with everything. The Christian congregation is of one mind in that it consists of real beginners.” ... Read the rest of the commentary on the website.
Thanks to this week's writer Chris Currie. | 
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