Join us today as we celebrate Holy Communion for the second Sunday of Easter, 4/24/22. To follow along at home, click here and print the Holy Communion Program. Text of today’s homily below.
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Homily Second Sunday of Easter – Sunday of Divine Mercy
Readings: Acts 5:12-16, Ps 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24, Rev 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19, Jn 20:19-31
John 20:19-31 (American Standard Version)
19 When therefore it was evening, on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 20 And when he had said this, he showed unto them his hands and his side. The disciples therefore were glad, when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be unto you: as the Father hath sent me, even so send I you. 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit: 23 whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called [a]Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.
26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them. Jesus cometh, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. 27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. 28 Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. 29 Jesus saith unto him, Because thou hast seen me, [b]thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
30 Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book: 31 but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name.
Doubts are good. Doubts keep us from falling for con-men, getting drawn in by liars, and falling for scams. They keep us from being gullible. But it's easy get tricked. In 1983, magician David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear on live TV. Everyone gathered on the dais and looked out at Lady Liberty. The curtain went up. Loud music played, fireworks went off, and when the curtain fell, she was gone. A helicopter hovered over the empty platform. The secret to the trick? The observers were seated on a rotating platform that turned them in another direction. The lights surrounding the monument were switched off and switched on around a mock platform. Lady Liberty was still there, off to the left, hidden in the dark, and nobody noticed. Copperfield said the message of his trick was that liberty could be taken away at any moment. He was wrong though. We’re giving it away.
You see, we are beset on all sides by the tricks of the culture and we’re buying them. Almost every song, movie, and book carries a message about pursuing passion, possessions, power, and prestige. This is the age of the selfie -- self-gratification, self-empowerment, self-promotion. Our TV villains are pedophile priests, rapist pastors, hypocritical believers, and nuns possessed by demons. The heroes are brave atheists, heroic skeptics, and valiant scientists, or perhaps drug dealers and mob bosses. The culture says that Christians don’t believe in science, Christians hate gays, and Christians are transphobic.
How is a person desperate for meaning supposed to find God amidst the fog of lies? How is a believing person to hold onto his or her faith in an environment where facts like these are hidden in the dark, far out of view?
· The largest charity in the US is Lutheran Services of America, and the Catholic Church is the largest non-governmental provider of education and medical services in the world.
· Priests are 1/100th as likely to abuse minors as public-school teachers.
· A humble friar named Roger Bacon pioneered the scientific method, a Belgian priest named Father George Lemaître was the originator of the Big Bang Theory, Father Gregor Mendel was the world’s first geneticist, and Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project and director of the NIH wrote a best-selling book called The Language of God relating his journey from atheism to Christian belief.
· In 1688 – 177 years before the Emancipation Proclamation – the first organization in the Western world to publicly denounce slavery was the Society of Friends, the Quakers. And the most distinguished civil rights leader in history was a Christian pastor named Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. [i]
Jesus knew there was only one way he could be heard over the noise of the Roman Empire. There was only one thing he could do that would forever make his message stand above all the rest. There was only one act that would prove, once and for all, to all people, in all places and in all times, that he is God incarnate. The only way he could cut through the fog of lies was to do something no spiritual teacher could ever do. He had to defeat death.
Rest assured my friends, that there is no way that the Christian message could’ve possibly reached our ears if Jesus of Nazareth had not risen from grave.
[i] To see the references for these facts and more, visit https://wp.me/ppc1y-1Rc