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The people in my first
church in West Virginia told stories of a local woman named Rita. Rita lived with a mental illness and spent a
good bit of her day sitting in front of the church on a bench smoking and
talking to something. Back when they used
to leave the church doors unlocked for people to come in to sit and pray, Rita could
sometimes be found in the church, smoking, and playing the piano. Even Sunday morning it was not unusual for
Rita to show up in the middle of the service to stand quietly in the back of
the sanctuary and listen and smoke.
One particular Sunday Rita
came, late as usual. Instead of standing
in the back she started walking down the centre aisle. As she went, she would tap someone on the
shoulder and ask, “Is Jesus here?” After
receiving a rather helpless glance she would move on to another and again ask,
“Is Jesus here?”
“Is Jesus here?” That is a very good question to ask a
congregation on a Sunday morning. How
would you know? What sort of indicators
would you look for? Jesus has promised
that wherever two or three are gathered in his name that he would be in the
midst of them. Okay, but then how does
one know? Would we see something? Would we feel something? Would things happen? How do we describe the presence of the Lord
among his people on Sunday morning?
Well, in the Old
Testament they spoke of God’s presence using the word Kabod which we translate as glory.
The word means weightiness but with respect to God it is how God makes
his presence known; everything from specific acts to the cloud of his glory
filling the temple, a cloud so heavy the priests couldn’t stand to do their
work (1Kg. 8:11). The Rabbis of early
Judaism used the word Shekinah to
speak of God’s presence with his people.
It means dwelling and this was their way of speaking about the Holy
Spirit. The Shekinah could be felt. It
was experienced as light, a felt light.
The nature of light is that light itself cannot be seen, but it makes
things see-able. When Jesus spoke of
himself being present in the midst of two or more, he was indeed tapping into
the rich tradition of the Rabbi’s and their experience of the Shekinah of God.
With that in mind; it’s
Easter evening. The disciples are in a
locked room afraid for their lives and confused. The tomb was empty and Mary Magdalene said
she had seen Jesus alive. Jesus appears
and says “Peace to you”. He shows them
his new seal of identity, his scars. They
see it really is him, alive and really in their midst. They rejoice.
What else could they do?
Then, Jesus again says,
“Peace to you”. But this time he adds
that he is sending them with the same ministry and mission that the Father had
sent him. He then breathes on them. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he says. He fills them with the new life of the Holy
Spirit. The Kabod, the Shekinah, the
real presence of God is now upon them, in them, like the air we breathe. Jesus then quantifies the mission they share
with him – the ministry of reconciliation.
“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain
the sins of any, they are retained.”
To let you in on a
little secret, what Jesus is doing here is making his followers to be God’s
temple, God’s dwelling place on earth, and this has implications that shapes
their purpose. In the Old Testament, the
Temple wasn’t the place where the Israelites “went to church”. All the reasons you can think of for people
going to church today had nothing to do with what the Temple was for in Ancient
Israel. Then, it was the place where sin
was dealt with. As God was present in
the midst of his people and his people are his image, sin and its effects,
which mar the image of God, had to be cleaned up so that God would remain among
his people. The Temple was the place
this happened.
We have a very
legalistic misunderstanding of sin that we inherited from medieval
Christianity. We think of sin as a list
of moral things that God says “If you do these things, I’ll send you to Hell.” You won’t find that kind of thinking anywhere
in the Bible. Sin is not a simple list
of “Do not’s” that we constantly feel compelled to do. Sin is a profound disease that we have that
effects our relationships and our self’s.
Sin makes human community in the image of God impossible. Sin is the way we self-interestedly break
trust with each other and cause one another to hurt. Sin is a relational matter
over and above being a behavioural problem.
So, we as the Body of
Christ, the Temple of the Living God, must be the place on Earth where sin is
dealt with. We can either be the place
on Earth where people can heal from sin or we can be the place that begrudges
people their sins and makes them believe they are unlovable even to God. Throughout its history, the church has done a
better job of the latter, than of the former.
We’ve more often judged and begrudged rather than brought reconciliation
and healing to troubled, broken self’s in troubled, broken relationships.
Well, back to the
question of the day: how do we know if Jesus is here? I have another story. Not long after I arrived at my last church in
Caledon, I decided I would try something new one Sunday morning, something that
the ancient church used to do but back then they did it with a kiss – a holy
kiss, a kiss of love, a kiss to symbolize the peace that arose from the
presence of Christ Jesus in their midst.
Don’t assume things. I did not
ask them to kiss. I asked them to turn
to the people next them and greet them with the peace of Christ.
Usually, in larger
churches who greet with the peace of Christ they just turn to the people around
them and say, “They peace of Christ be with you” and the person would respond,
“And also with you.” But that morning at
my church something wonderful happened.
A woman named Judy (I’ve changed her name) jumped up and went and
greeted every single person there with the peace of Christ and it caused
everybody to follow suit. Everybody
greeted everybody with the peace of Christ…and they did that nearly every
Sunday for the next nearly ten years I was with them.
When you ask people in
small churches to greet each another, they will likely do it that way. It’s like a rule of small group
dynamics. But this was different. Judy was in her 60’s and was going through a
bitter divorce. She was profoundly
hurting. But that morning she welled up
with joy. The love, the fellowship that
she had with her family in Christ there was her anchor. At the time, that church numbered in the
30’s. Nearly all of them had come from
churches were they had had bad experiences.
The congregation had suffered the effects of a bully, particularly the
leadership, a bully who drove their last minister away…and here they were
moving forward again. They were joyful
that morning. That spontaneous eruption
of healing fellowship truly embodied Jesus and his peace. He was there bringing healing. The Kabod,
the Shekinah glory of God shone forth
among us that morning.
Greeting one another
with the peace of Christ is an ancient practice of the church that they did in
worship. There are liturgies reaching
back to the 500’s that have it in it.
They did it as an embodiment of what Jesus did that Easter evening. Greeting one another with the peace of Christ
is a real act of peace, of reconciliation, of hospitality; of saying he is here
with the ministry and mission of healing forgiveness. By this act we share in that ministry and
mission. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus and the Father, is here and we
must really respond.
Jesus is in our midst
with healing forgiveness and he has empowered us to share in his ministry and
mission of reconciliation by breathing the Holy Spirit into us…and, like it or
not, this is why we greet one another with the peace of Christ. Friends, please greet one another with the
peace of Christ. Amen.
