Peace Be Upon You. Look at My Wounds.
Second Sunday of Easter – Year B
April 19, 2009

Let us pray: God of the risen Christ, breathe upon us your spirit of new life. Where we cannot see, help us to keep our minds open toward faith. Strengthen us as we seek to know you, and help us to grow in love for you and for each other. Amen.

So, here we are in the season of Easter – but we are also in the season after Easter. The distinction is important – the season of Easter – with its stories confirming that resurrection has occurred – and as we heard moments ago in the scripture readings for today. But also in the season after Easter – when church folks figure that those of us working in pastoral ministry will be a little less busy and therefore meetings can more easily be scheduled.

Many of you know that last year at our annual conference meeting I was elected to be president of Alberta and Northwest Conference beginning at the close of this May's conference meeting. In anticipation of that and similar events in all the other conferences of the United Church of Canada – we, the presidents-elect and in the All Native Circle Conference – the leading elders, were invited to attend a gathering in Toronto this week – the week after Easter. Unfortunately, neither of the leading elders of the All Native Circle Conference were able to attend our meeting – one because of illness and one because of just too full a schedule – even in this time after Easter. Also, the president-elect of Newfoundland and Labrador conference had the unenviable experience of travelling to Toronto only to be taken ill and thus spend all but a few hours of the meeting in his hotel room and then travelled back to Newfoundland, having only met us very briefly on Wednesday afternoon.

Despite these regrettable but unavoidable absences, the remaining eleven presidents-elect spent a very rich time together – reflecting on the church and the blessings and challenges that we face as we all contemplate and prepare to take on a leadership role which I think I can safely say is anticipated with a healthy mixture of excitement and anxiety. A very significant part of the richness we encountered in the meeting this week came about because of the time we were privileged to spend with other leaders in this United Church of Canada. Despite her own illness, the General Secretary of the United Church dragged herself into work on Thursday morning in order to spend some time with us and share with us her perspective on the church as she sees it in her role as the senior staff member of the denomination. Now some of you will know of whom I speak, and many others will certainly know when I mention Nora Sanders by name. She first appeared at breakfast at Thursday morning and she immediately came and sat beside me, promising not to breathe on me and asked how things are in Yellowknife. So I know she wants me to bring greetings to you – those who still know and remember Nora from her time as a member of this congregation and those of you who are part of this congregation now – a congregation which is living out what it means to be Christian in this place in Canada and this time in the world's history. More about that in a minute.

The other leader who spent considerable time with us this week was our Moderator, David Giuliano. I want to say more about his time with us, but I first need to say a bit about this remarkable leader. I don't know how much you know of his story, but please forgive me if I am telling it to you again. David Giuliano was ordained in 1987 and settled – that's the process the United Church uses to place people in their first pastoral relationship – in Marathon Ontario – a mining and mill town along the north shore of Lake Superior. He is still the minister there, some twenty two years later. In August 2006, David was somewhat surprisingly elected as Moderator of the United Church. I played a video of his acceptance speech at the August 2006 meeting of our church board. He was a good looking, energetic, extremely well spoken forty-something man with a lovely shock of wavy blondish hair. Only a few days after he was elected, he had a medical appointment which led to more appointments and very quickly thereafter major surgery to remove a cancerous brain tumour. His wavy hair was gone, and a piece of his shoulder blade was removed to cover the wound in his temple. It's a story told much better in his recently published book, but I mention his story here because of the connection it has with the message for today for us and for the church. David has many, many gifts and he is quick to tell you that he thought he was elected to be Moderator because of his gifts. What he discovered is that it is his woundedness, his vulnerability that has defined his time as Moderator. It wasn't part of his plan – it still wouldn't be part of his plan, and it is not as if his vulnerability has been turned into a strength – it isn't. But he has used his illness to gain new perspective on what it means to be people of God.

On Wednesday evening we heard snapshot descriptions from the presidents-elect who were present, of the conferences of our United Church of Canada. This was not a completely positive experience, coloured as it was by another presentation on Wednesday afternoon which shared news of the leveling off of Mission and Service donations – brought about by fewer and fewer donors from fewer and few congregations all across our church. The only good news from that presentation was that the donors are giving substantially more than they ever did, and for that we are grateful, for the lower numbers everywhere might easily lead to even more difficult decisions about the kind of work we can do as a denomination and the number of people we employ to do it. Of course our story as a denomination is not completely unique, but it does have its own characteristics. The United Church of Canada is declining and it is moving from a position of influence to one of life on the margins. There are many who would say that is not a bad thing – for it is on the margins that we find our roots. The Acts community described in our reading today was not an establishment community – it was a marginal, secretive in order to avoid persecution, struggling community of people who believed in a new way, and a communitarian ethic that was meant to build itself up to support those who were part of it. It was a community built on a new vision of God's way in the world, and strengthened by a realisation of that vision in the life, words and actions of Jesus of Nazareth.

David Giuliano spoke a word to us in the midst of our reflection on the state of the church in this time and place that came straight out of today's reading from the gospel – and which spoke richly of his own experience. The risen Christ – Jesus in some kind of bodily appearance – which is both spiritual because locked doors are no barrier and real – because the wounds can be touched and considered. Here's the scene – the disciples are gathered with this mysterious Jesus. Listen to what he says “Peace be upon you. Look at my wounds.”

This is not a resurrection without struggle. This is not a story of unchallenged hope. This is a message to the church – a message of what we seek – Peace be upon us and what it takes to get there, and be there: Look at the wounds. How many times have I read the story in John's gospel – in fact I read it that very morning in my Gideon supplied hotel bible, as part of the preparation I was doing for this week's worship, and missed it? It is part of the richness of scripture that this happens all the time – layers and layers of insight and meaning are just waiting to be revealed in the right time and place. How many times have I read the story in John's gospel and missed that juxtaposition of hope and struggle and yet there it was this week, revealed to us by a leader who has found his vulnerability, his own woundedness to be the one which has directed and guided his time as leader. It was like a flashing neon message to the church – Peace be upon you. Look at my wounds.

We talked of lots of other things – of hope and struggle in many other ways. We talked of the Great Emergence – a gathering sense that something strange and wonderful and scary and mysterious and exciting is happening. It has happened about every five hundred years and it could be happening again. But in the waiting and the wondering we are called to be the church – not the church any longer that wields might in the halls of power and influence in the board rooms and legislative assemblies of this land and others, not the church that can speak and have people listen, but a church which still meets in community every week to follow a new vision of who and what we are called by God to be, a church which offers a counter perspective to the visions of multi-national corporations, international financial institutions, political systems, economic systems, ecological systems, and any other systems which drain life and capital out of our existence as human beings and followers of God's way.

Well, that's just a glimpse of the richness of the time we spent together this week – a richness which helped relieve some of the anxiety I am feeling about this new role to which I have been elected, but which also left me in awe of how I will measure up, a richness which gave me much to consider, a richness which will colour my own reflections on this community of which we are all apart.

Finally, I want to give you one other insight that came to us this week, in our own discussions about the challenge we face in a time of dwindling resources and where scarcity is the spiritual gift with which we have been blessed. Carol Hancock is the national staff person who guided this week's meeting. At one point we were discussing the dwindling resources faced by our national church. Carol raised the irony that we as people of the gospel consider wealth as far more dangerous than poverty, even as we wonder and dream of what we could do if only we had more money. We all nodded knowingly at this statement and then very insightfully David Giuliano piped in that even though we know that – we've been willing to take the risk! Have we learned anything from the book of Acts? Amen. Stay tuned...