An Easter sermon on John 20 by Rev. Shanta Premawardhana

Salaam Aleikkum ~ An Easter sermon by Shanta Premawardhana
Rev Shanta Premawardhana has been director of the WCC's inter-religious dialogue and cooperation programme since November 2007. When working with the National Council of Churches in the USA he also wrote a blog.

Let me greet you with the words our Lord Jesus Christ used to greet his disciples when he appeared to them in the upper room: Salaam Aleikkum. If the risen Christ were to approach you in the guise of your Muslim neighbor, he might greet you in the same way. And of course, most of you know the correct response -- Aleikkum Asalaam! Would you turn to you neighbor and say Salaam Aleikkum and respond with an Aliekkum Asalaam!
Let me quote from John 20:21ff, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And before we go any further with this, I want you to notice “As the Father has sent me” is about God’s mission to the world, “So I send you” is about Jesus commissioning us for our mission. When he had said this, Jesus, fully knowing that we cannot do any of this by our own power, breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'"
On this the first day of the week after Easter when many of us return after the Easter holidays, energized and ready to get back to work, isn’t it good to know that the risen Jesus breathes on us again, and again offers us the gift of the Holy Spirit that we may indeed be energetically engage with God’s mission.
That word reminds me of the great ecumenist Bishop Lesslie Newbegin. “There is nothing called the mission of the church,” he said. “That is a misnomer. There is only God's mission and the church is the vehicle of God's mission.” But too often, he says, the church lacks the power of the Spirit, is not attuned to God's mission and therefore has no alternative but to put its trust in its own structures and traditions. And then can become the very antithesis of God's mission. Indeed, it is when we are filled by the power of the Spirit that we are attuned to God's mission and have the power to be engaged in it.
It makes sense then, to take a brief look at how Jesus engaged in God’s mission and ask ourselves what we must do in our context to continue the work of Christ here. There is no better place to begin than in Luke 4:14ff, which describes one of the first days of Jesus' ministry. We didn’t read this scripture this morning, but I commend it for your reflection this week. Luke begins his narrative of Jesus' ministry with this descriptive phrase: "Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit."
Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, i.e. attuned to God's mission and having the power to be engaged in it, returned to Galilee and the religious community got excited about him. Like how politicians go to their home towns to announce their candidacy, Jesus went to Nazareth, his home town, to announce his campaign. He stood up to read and this famous preacher, the hometown hero was given the scroll of Isaiah, and he read those famous words from chapter 61, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." He rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. That is sat down to preach. In those days, you stood to read the scripture and sat down to preach. And their eyes were fixed on him. There was an air of expectancy that filled the room. And he said, "Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." That was his announcement. That was his manifesto. He is saying, this is a description of God's mission and I am empowered to be engaged in God's mission.
In those days people didn't stay politely and quietly until the entire sermon was over – unlike you all! When the preacher said something unexpected, stunning or controversial, and preachers filled with the power of the Spirit often do, people said something right then and there. Now, these people don't seem to have caught the impact of what he said immediately, perhaps their eyes were still glazed by his reputation. They were still amazed and said, "Is this not Joseph and Mary's son?"
Now, as Jesus gets warmed up in his preaching, he is trying to expound on what this means. He is very aware that these people who seem so receptive to him now are not going to be so, when the preaching is over. The preaching on the reign of God is going to take him into an area which the congregants at the synagogue at Nazareth are not going to like. Jesus is going to tell them that God's mission goes against their tradition. He told them that when there was a three and a half year famine in the land, and God's prophet Elijah, one also filled with the Spirit, was called to go, where now? To a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. He was sent to a foreign widow. Not to anyone in Israel, the chosen ones. And then, a widow, a woman whose husband had died, and therefore considered not to be in God's best favor. Jesus does not stop there, he gives another example. Elisha, another prophet filled with the Spirit was also sent to a foreigner, Naaman the Syrian. Why, weren't there any lepers in Israel? Of course there were. But God chose the Syrian.
So, what's the point? The point is to say that God's mission is different from the synagogue's mission. The synagogue thinks that they need to simply cater to the Jews, God's chosen people. But Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, fully attuned to God's mission preaches, no, God's mission is an inclusive mission. You could hear their protest, can't you? But we are the chosen people. This is consistent with scripture. Why would God be interested in the making this an inclusive community, when scripture says that it we are the chosen ones? Aha! But Jesus is also within scripture. His examples are taken right from the book. Jesus unfreezes Isaiah for them. They had never read Isaiah that way, they had never considered Elijah's visit to the widow at Zarephath or Elisha's to Naaman the Syrian that way. How can this be, they are wondering.
Friends, throughout history, people in religious authority who interpreted scripture, chose particular scripture passages they wanted to highlight and that became the norm, the tradition. Such interpretations often led to claims that were designed to exclude people who were different from those who held power. When questions arose, around who or what is legitimate and what interpretations were orthodox or the right belief, they were resolved by referring to this tradition. This way, religious authorities consolidated power.
I am helping organize this May in the United States a Missiology consultation to examine the missiology of the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, a port in Virginia. This was a place of massacre of Native American populations and the port of entry for the slave ships from Africa. These atrocities were based on a particular missiology that which legitimized colonization in order to convert. And don’t we remember South Africa’s there was Apartheid system. Now, there are a couple of places in the Bible where one could find support for these atrocities. And that was enough justification for them. Never mind, everything else the Bible had to say about there being no Jew or gentile, slave or free in Christ Jesus. Never mind, what the Bible said about God's love for the slaves and the oppressed. Never mind Jesus' manifesto that he came to proclaim release to the captives. This was how the religious authorities maintained their power. You remember that it took a Martin Luther King, a Cesar Chavez, a Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu to change our thinking on that subject. Many Evangelical churches, the Vatican, and even some of our churches still use a similar argument to keep women from the pulpit and the priesthood. Never mind that the Bible says there is no male or female in Christ Jesus. Never mind that some of the illustrious prophets of Israel were women. Never mind church planter Lydia and pastor Priscilla. The tradition has consolidated the power in males, and it is the same tradition that is used as a guide to resolve this question as well.
The religious authorities in Jesus' day considered themselves to be legitimate heirs of the long line of authoritative interpreters of the faith. So, when later in the gospel story, Jesus meets people who are sick and disabled, people whom the religious authorities said were in disfavor with God, therefore sinners, Jesus does not hesitate to go to them, touch them despite the religious prohibitions about contamination and heal them even on a Sabbath. That he would go out to those who had found disfavor in the eyes of society was a real problem for the religious authorities.
That day, in the sermon at Nazareth, Jesus basically told those people that the reign of God is about a community that includes those whom religious power has disenfranchised. And you know what they did? They ran him out of the synagogue, ran him out of town and tried to kill him. What Jesus was saying about God's mission may have been based totally on scripture, but it ran thoroughly counter to their tradition, assumptions, prejudices and biases, which said, God could not possibly love the widow of Zarephath or the Naaman the Syrian. It is the same religious authorities that ran him out of the synagogue, that expelled the man born blind from the synagogue, that opposed him every time Jesus tried to share God's love with the disenfranchised, and ultimately took Jesus to his cross.
Friends, there’s plenty more in the gospel story that point to this. And I know that you already know this. It is hard to work in this building if you don’t. But it is necessary that at this time of new beginnings to examine again our own biases, prejudices, assumptions and power plays that we are so used to that keep us from engaging in not necessarily the church’s mission, but in God’s mission. To empower us to that task, the risen Jesus who comes to us with a salaam aleikkum, also says to us, “as the father has sent me so I send you.” And knowing that we cannot do it on our own, indeed knowing that the church cannot do it alone, he breathes on us, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Would you turn to your neighbor and say, “Receive the Holy Spirit!”