The Second Sunday of Easter
March 30, 2008

The Reverend Robert W. Cowperthwaite

The Gospel reading about Thomas – doubting Thomas, comes up on the Sunday after Easter in all three lectionary years. I looked at it again this year, and decided that I just couldn’t come up with anything fresh to say about it. And after Ann’s sermon last week, asking why the Sunday after Easter was called ”low Sunday,” I didn’t think I could ask someone else to preach!

          As I pondered this week, the words of the Collect for the Day kept begging for my attention. 

 Almighty and Everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith;  

          “Reconciliation” is the word that really got me going. As the collect says, it was in the “Paschal mystery” when this “new covenant of reconciliation” was established. On Easter Eve, at the lighting of the Paschal Candle, during the chanting of the Exsultet, we heard, “How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and humanity is reconciled to God.”

And in our Book of Common Prayer, instead of “Confession and Absolution,” the rite is called “Reconciliation of a Penitent.”

          Reconciliation is what God, in raising Jesus Christ from the dead, established as a new covenant with all human-kind. It is what we are about. It has to do with our relationship to God, and our relationship with one another. It has to do with putting a relationship back the way it started out, the way it was intended, the way it should be. 

          If we look at the big picture, we begin by remembering that everything was created by God, and God said it was all good. Or, as Eucharistic Prayer C puts it,

 “From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another.”

          Instead of lives filled with peace and concord, as God intended, we broke our share of the covenant. Again, from Prayer C,

 “Again and again, you called us to return. Through prophets and sages you revealed your righteous Law. And in the fullness of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace. By his blood he reconciled us, by his wounds, we are healed.”

          Reconciliation is healing, it is being restored to right relationships, it is what God, in Christ has done, and is still doing for us. It is what we are called to be about as the body of Christ. We don’t have to look very far to see where reconciliation is needed. In fact, we seem to be going backwards instead of heading down the path of freedom and peace Jesus opened for us. In religion, in politics, in our personal lives we keep dividing things into either/or, right (my way)/ wrong (your way), liberal/conservative, orthodox/revisionist dichotomies that stress differences rather than celebrate mutuality. How can there be reconciliation when there is no willingness to seek commonality?

The First Letter of Peter is thought to have been written to churches in Asia Minor made up mostly of gentile converts to Christianity. There is not much about Jewish customs or rituals. Instead, it seems to be encouraging people whose new-found faith has caused them to be ridiculed by their culture, their former friends and even families. Yet, as we heard in part of it today, the author encourages them saying (about Jesus),

“Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with and indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” [1 Pet. 1:9]

During this Paschal season, this ongoing season of Easter joy, may we celebrate the covenant of reconciliation by finding ways to in fact be reconcilers. May we show forth in our lives what we profess by our faith, looking for the Christ in one another. How better to honor and give thanks to the one whose death and resurrection brought new hope to a broken world?