It’s lovely to be here with you at St. Barnabas this morning. Father Voytech is on a well-deserved Easter holiday. I’m Leighton Lee, the director of St. Marks in Niagara-on-the-Lake, your close neighbor. It’s a great joy for me to be with you this morning.
Once upon a time, on the first Sunday after Easter, the archdeacon discovered a tiny, very deformed baby had been left on the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral. And so he named the poor little thing after the opening words of the Latin Introit for today: Quasimodo. He’s more commonly known as the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the isolated and unloved figure who dwelled among the bells of the church. He lived a fearful, isolated existence in a very confined and closed-in space. And it was only because of love that he finally found the courage to emerge from the locked belfry in the cathedral.
Last week we heard about the closed tomb whose stone had been rolled away. Today we’ve heard about the closed doors of the upper room where the disciples had locked themselves away for fear of the religious authorities. I remind you of both of these things because opening up that which is closed is an essential truth of the Easter story. Because you and I aren’t meant to live a closed-up existence, be it physical, emotional, or spiritual.
Even our faith can be a closed door locked tightly against the claims of resurrection. We’ve been taught to believe only what we can see, what we can prove, what we can quantify. But we can’t do any of that where the resurrection is concerned. Of course, we can read about it. Yet, we’ve also been taught not to believe everything we read. And considering that our best biblical scholars now believe that none of the accounts of the resurrection—neither Paul’s nor the evangelists’—were written by eyewitnesses, we wonder if even they’re reliable.
Today’s appropriately nicknamed “Low Sunday.” And perhaps you and I are feeling low, struggling as we do with whether the resurrection is true. We have so many doubts about it and can’t help but wonder if it’s yet another instance of fake news. And who can blame us? After all, the resurrection accounts don’t meet modern standards of veracity and verifiability, what with all their discrepancies and supernatural appearances.
But to treat the resurrection like a piece of news which can be forensically examined, tested, and proved is problematic to say the least. I‘ll even go so far as to say it’s essentially a fool’s errand. And I say that because the resurrection is not news. It’s an event which leads to life and to love. You see, resurrection isn’t something we’ve been told about but can’t experience. It’s something we apprehend in our quotidian lives. And if it all seems so unbelievable, maybe it’s because we show very little evidence of its power working in us.
Easter faith lets go of the past, no matter how sweet, and says a radical yes both to the present moment and the future promise. It refuses to succumb to doubt and despair and learns to laugh even in the face of death. It isn’t about going to heaven after we die, but about making this present hell a little more heavenly. More and more I’ve come to think it’s this last one which is the most important.
Alas, we’ve wasted so much time trying to convince folks that the resurrection accounts are reliable when what we should have been doing all along is showing them the power of this event in the here and now and what it means for the future. Because when you think about it, the disciples didn’t retreat into nostalgia, looking back to the good old days with the master. No, they set their faces and energy to the future and, in the power of the resurrection, began to remake the world into something resembling at least a little of the kingdom Jesus died to bring. All because resurrection’s power unlocked their lives.
I’ve spent much of my life locked up in a room of fear. I bet you have, too. My particular locked room was called the closet. The names of your locked rooms are different: addiction, depression, loneliness, to name but a few. But whatever they’re named, love was and is the way out of them. Sometimes love caresses us out of them and sometimes it yanks us out of them. But however it happens, we can only leave those locked places by its power—power which is known by human touch.
Which is where things get interesting. Isn’t it strange that last week Jesus said to Mary, “Do not hold on to me,” yet today he says to Thomas, “Reach out your hand and put it in my side”? And then Jesus says, “Have you believed because you have seen me?” Well, yes, actually. How else could it be? We have seen him. And that’s why we believe; we’ve seen him and touched him and taken his life into our own. We’ve seen what resurrection looks like. After all, we live in an Easter world whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
But we must reach out to that power which even now yearns to free us. Because if we truly want to know resurrection, if we want to be drawn out of the locked room into new life which even now beckons with promise, we need to touch love’s hand and believe that not even death can break its grip. And that’s not just a bit of old news. It’s the living truth. Prove it by how you love and live even in the midst of fear and doubt. Amen.