{"id":13923,"date":"2023-04-16T00:00:08","date_gmt":"2023-04-15T23:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/turski.blog\/?p=13923"},"modified":"2023-04-16T00:00:08","modified_gmt":"2023-04-15T23:00:08","slug":"2nd-sunday-of-easter-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/?p=13923","title":{"rendered":"2nd Sunday of Easter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes it feels too much to bear. Sometimes it feels like humankind is hell-bent on destroying itself. Some countries wage wars against their neighbours, or against their own population, not to mention tribal or sectarian conflicts in many places around the globe. The economic outlook isn\u2019t good either, with inflation galloping at breakneck speed and little prospect of wages catching up any time soon. Political classes seem to be self-absorbed and self-serving without paying too much attention to the challenges faced by those whom they supposedly serve. Then we have our personal or domestic challenges. It\u2019s very tempting to turn everything off and hide in a comfortable cocoon of total ignorance.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have painted such a bleak picture to give you a sense of how Jesus\u2019 close friends felt in today\u2019s gospel. St John very concisely described in one sentence: <\/span>\u201cIn the evening of that same day, the first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews.\u201d<\/span><\/i> Three days earlier they had lived through the most horrendous event of their lives; they witnessed the cruel end to their Master\u2019s life and subsequently to their own dreams and expectations, as expressed by two other disciples on their escape from Jerusalem: <\/span>\u201cwe had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.\u201d (Luke 24:21)<\/span><\/i> The closed door wasn\u2019t just protecting them from the dangerous outside world; it was also blocking their way out of their dismal situation.<\/span><\/p>\n

This was the context in which Jesus appeared to them, cocooned in their grief and despair. His greeting was counterintuitive to their feelings of misery and utter dejection: <\/span>\u201cPeace be with you.\u201d<\/span><\/i> In the language of the Bible \u201cpeace\u201d isn\u2019t simply a state of no conflict but one of wholeness and internal integrity; the state that is hinted at by the English phrase \u201cto be at peace\u201d. The disciples were anything but at peace. But Jesus\u2019 greeting echoed the promise made just a few days earlier, at the Last Supper: <\/span>\u201cPeace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.\u201d (John 14:27)<\/span><\/i> Then Jesus did something even stranger than His greeting of peace: <\/span>\u201c[He] showed them his hands and his side\u201d<\/span><\/i> or, in other words, He showed them his wounds, a blunt reminder of His suffering. Jesus rose from the dead, not to some brand spanking new, glorious existence, completely disconnected and dissociated from what had happened. Jesus came back to life with His painful past in tow. His resurrection didn\u2019t cancel, remove or forget the past; on the contrary, His painful past was a defining element of who He had become.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the most common arguments against the existence of God in general and of Christianity, in particular, is the presence of suffering in the world in so many forms. Such sentiment is completely understandable, taken at face value. But when you dig a bit deeper, it\u2019s not so obvious. We can find many examples of how a stress-free, bubble-wrapped upbringing unintentionally causes more problems than it solves, and they range widely. To list just a few: an inability to deal with stressful or challenging situations; a sense of unlimited, unrestricted entitlement, trampling over everyone else\u2019s rights; expectations that everything must be fun and entertaining\u2026 When you think about it, we are whipped into the shape of maturity by facing up to challenges and problems, some of them painful or even traumatic. Our successes might define us, mainly when they come as a result of hard work, overcoming difficulties and dealing with challenges. These days we often hear of an apparent mental health epidemic among young people. Sometimes I feel that as a society we too quickly medicalise conditions that are part and parcel of growing up; instead of offering help and support on dealing with them, we rather look for more mental bubble-wrap. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I don\u2019t mean to trivialise* genuine mental health problems; in fact, every now and again I am involved in helping those affected. I am saying that as adults we have to learn how to embrace our past, particularly those painful and difficult moments and turn them into something positive. Having done that we can help younger generations to face their challenges bravely. That\u2019s the meaning of the third strange thing Jesus told his cowed disciples in today\u2019s gospel: <\/span>\u201cAs the Father sent me, so am I sending you.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We are sent out not as morally perfect religious fanatics. Firstly, we are never morally perfect; none of us. These moral imperfections are our wounds that remain with us after we have been raised to a new life of grace and are often on display, whether we like it or not. Secondly, our mission is that of compassion, not condemnation. Thirdly, the door remains locked until its owner has decided to open it up. Jesus didn\u2019t blow the door open and neither should we. Unless it\u2019s our own door.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes it feels too much to bear. Sometimes it feels like humankind is hell-bent on destroying itself. Some countries wage wars against their neighbours, or against their own population, not to mention tribal or sectarian conflicts in many places around the globe. The economic outlook isn\u2019t good either, with inflation galloping at breakneck speed and little prospect of wages catching up any time soon. Political classes seem to be self-absorbed and self-serving without paying too much attention to the challenges faced by those whom they supposedly serve. Then we have our personal or domestic challenges. It\u2019s very tempting to turn everything off and hide in a comfortable cocoon of total ignorance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","category-year-a"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}