3 Easter, Yr B (2024) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield

3 Easter, Yr B (2024)                                                              The Rev. Karen C. Barfield

Acts 3:12-19                                                                       St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

1 John 3:1-7                                                                                   “Transforming our Pain”

Luke 24:36b-48

In the name of the one, holy, and living God:

who was, and is, and is to come.  Amen.

Some years ago, I went on a silent retreat at the Trinity Episcopal Center in Salter Path, NC…right across the road from the ocean.

Having never been there before,

I was struck by how many trees there were!

I’m used to the beach looking more like my image of a desert,

except with lots of water!

I expected to see vast expanses of sand with occasional scrubby brush on the dunes.

But there,

on the sound side of the island,

were these amazing trees

      with branches arching up and winding themselves around each other…

sometimes so thick I couldn’t even see the sky.

In one of these little forests, I discovered a path winding through the trees.

Every now and then one of the Stations of the Cross,

carved into a block of wood,

was nailed to the trunk of a tree.

At the Third Station,

depicting Jesus falling for the first time,

I had to stop and stare.

At the base of the tree,

which actually looked like the merging of two trees,

      each of the two tree trunks had a hole…

a deep hole going right into the trunk of the tree. 

For one of the trees, the hole was literally heart-shaped…

            a heart-shaped hole at ground level,

right in the base of the tree.

And then up about two feet from the ground,

there was a two-foot tall “slit” in the tree that was several inches wide. 

I could see straight through the tree trunk

to the leaves and trees and bushes on the other side.

The remarkable thing was that this tree stood probably 15 or 20 feet high. 

It was not only happy and healthy...

the tree was thriving!

The tree was thriving even with its large, gaping holes.

And…this tree wasn’t the only tree with a large hole in it…

this was true of at least half of the trees I saw. 

And yet, despite their holes, they each were growing tall and strong.

Last week’s gospel reading and today’s gospel reading in which Jesus,

in his post-resurrection appearances,

     shows up with the holes still in his hands and in his side

                        reminded me of these wounded, thriving trees.

Jesus appears to the disciples:

            “Look at my hands and my feet…

                        Touch me and see.”

 Look at my wounds…it is me.

 Richard Rohr, in his book,

Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer

            says,

“If you were going to create a religion,

would you think of creating, as your religious image,

      a naked, bleeding, wounded man?

“It is the most unlikely image for God….

“None of us in our wildest imagination would have come up with it….

“Jesus agrees to be the Wounded One,

and we Christians are these strange believers in a wounded healer.

“We come to God not through our strength but through our weakness.”

We come to God through our weakness…

            through our human pain and suffering.

And God comes to us in God’s own suffering and pain:

            “Look at my hands and my feet,” Jesus says.

                        “Touch me and see.

                                    It is I.”

This is the same Jesus who cried out a few days before as he hung upon a cross:

            “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

“I am thirsty.”

“It is finished.”

I do believe that it is hard to hold our pain.

We would much prefer not to have it.

And yet all of us have been deeply wounded,

      whether at our own doing or at the hands of others, or -

            even more likely - both.

Jesus offers us a way of transforming our wounds…

            of holding them and transforming them…

      of finding strength and new life even as the scars remain visible within us.

Rohr uses the image of an electrical transformer:

“Most people are like electric wires,” he says.

“What comes in is what goes out.

“Someone calls us a name,

and we call them a name back.

“That is, most people pass on the same energy that is given to them.

“Now compare an electric wire

to those big, grey transformers that you see on utility poles.

“Dangerous current or voltage comes in,

but something happens inside that grey box

      and what comes out is, in fact, now helpful and productive.

“That is exactly what Jesus does with suffering….

he did not return the negative energy directed at him—

       not during his life, nor when he hung on the cross.

“He held it inside and made it into something much better.

“That is how he ‘took away the sin of the world.’

“He refused to pass it on!

“Until the world understands that,

there will be no new world.” 

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer (Paulist Press: 2014), 78–80.

Jesus transformed suffering and pain

            rather than returning it

       or passing it on.

That is how he took away the sin of the world.

He replaced sin with love.

He asked God to forgive those who harmed him,

and he calls us to do the same.

In today’s gospel story, after Jesus assures the disciples that he is alive and well,

            despite the greatest harm possible done to him,

      he reminds the disciples:

“Thus it is written,

that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day,

and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name
       to all nations.”

Repentance and forgiveness:

            this is the key to transforming pain.

The way to transform harm

            is to forgive those who have harmed us…even when they don’t acknowledge it…

     and to repent of the harm we have done

and then forgive ourselves as well.

We must forgive ourselves,

or we will continue to transmit harm.

Jesus opens the way for us to transform our wounds…

            showing us the way to live and thrive,

                        even with gaping holes still visible…

       just as he showed the disciples…

just as those trees on the North Carolina coast witnessed in their own lives.

Jesus saw and related to each person as a beloved child of God…

            a child of God deserving respect and dignity and honor and forbearance,

                        a child of God invited to repentance and offered forgiveness,

                 a child of God worthy of God’s wide and wild embrace of love and healing.

In today’s letter from 1st John, we hear:

“See what love the Father has given us,

            that we should be called children of God;

       and that is what we are!”

“…What we will be has not yet been revealed.

“What we do know is this:

            when he is revealed,

                        we will be like him,

       for we will see him as he is.”

We will be like God…this is our hope.

God, in Jesus, offers us a new way of being in the world…

            a way of transforming our pain.

Jesus walks with us on the journey, inviting us to Come and See…

            offering us forgiveness and healing and love.

And as we walk with Jesus in the way of repentance and forgiveness and love,

            we can then walk with others in their pain,

offering a way of life that is counter to what this world offers:

       a way of love and abundant life.

In a few moments we will break bread together,

            remembering Jesus’ body broken open in love.

May our eyes be opened to Christ in our midst…

            and to the sustaining strength and power of the abundant love of God

     to carry us forward into the world as a people forgiven, healed, and renewed.  Amen.