WHO COMMANDS YOUR HEART & YOUR FEET

Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

2nd Sunday of Easter,  April 27, 2025

Pastor Ritva H Williams

Our gospel lesson takes us back to the evening of Easter Sunday. Mary Magdalene has shared the good news of Christ’s resurrection with the disciples earlier in the day, but they are still huddled behind locked doors, afraid of the Judean authorities. Maybe the disciples are also afraid of meeting Jesus. After all, they abandoned him when he was arrested. Peter denied him, not once but three times. 

Then the Risen Christ is right there in their midst. He does not say a anything about their failure to be loyal and true to him. Jesus does not utter a single word of condemnation. Ever gracious, ever merciful Christ greets them with a blessing, “Peace be with you.” When Jesus shows them his scars, the disciples are moved from fear to rejoicing. The scars affirm the authenticity of his suffering and death, just as Christ’s appearance in that locked room demonstrates that he has been raised to new life. 

Again Jesus says,  “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I send you … receive the Holy Spirit.” and breathes on them. As they breathe in the divine presence, the disciples are empowered to become Christ’s apostles, ambassadors, and agents. 

Christ tells the disciples, they have the ability to forgive and retain sins. This is not permission for them, or for us, to determine which sins or whose sins will or will not be forgiven.  Christ’s words are a warning to pay attention to the consequences of our actions. Eugene Petersen’s translation makes this clear, “If you forgive someone’s sins, they are gone for good. If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?” (John 19:23, The Message).

Sin is anything that negates, diminishes, or misrepresents the truth that all human beings, without exception, are God-created, God-imaged and God-beloved. The denial of this truth is the foundation of racism, slavery, white supremacy, patriarchy, homo/transphobia, and every other social and cultural prejudice we use to justify harming other humans. So many of our bad decisions are made when we forget, or simply cannot believe that we really are God-created, God-imaged, and God-beloved.

And then there’s Thomas. One of my favorite commentators, Mark Davis describes Thomas’ situation that first Easter Sunday like this:

Thomas was no longer being with the disciples … The dream died and while there may be a lot to process, for all intents and purposes the fellowship of the believers is no longer necessary. So, Thomas walks. Perhaps misery loves company, but some of us prefer to deal with our misery alone… [When] the disciples seek out Thomas and tell him that they have seen Jesus … he is skeptical …  

[Eight days later, Thomas’]  head and … heart remain unconvinced, but he joins them. His feet are with them and they are walking the path again. To me, this may well be why Jesus washed their feet - because where we walk makes all the difference. There will be times when our head simply cannot wrap itself around the idea that God is making all things new. There will be times when our hearts are not courageous, but discouraged. Even so, we can "believe" with our feet, by walking with the community, letting those who have the capacity to sing the faith sing while we are silent, letting those who can praise praise, while we can only lament.  

The scene closes with the Risen Christ’s declaration, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe.” Blessed are those who believe with their feet even when their hearts and minds are filled with uncertainty. 

That makes for a nice segue to our reading from Revelation where the way church members walk in the world has serious consequences. 

The title of this final book of the Bible is the Greek word apokalypsis which we translate as “revelation.” It refers to an unveiling or revealing of things normally hidden from our eyes. A revelation is like pulling back a curtain so we can peek behind it. In this case, the curtain is the veil separating material reality from the spiritual realm.  

Revelation presents itself as a letter from John (not beloved disciple/author of gospel). He was a native of the Holy Land but sought asylum in the Roman province of Asia (modern Turkey) during/after the first Jewish-Roman War (66-73 CE). At the time of writing he was incarcerated at a Roman detention center for political prisoners on the island of Patmos.  

John writes to the leaders of churches located in the cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. These cities were both dazzling and terrifying to newly arrived refugees and migrants. For the first time, they would have met and mingled with resident aliens of different lands, local Greeks, and agents of the Roman empire. 

John describes the earthly reality of these churches: A church member has been killed in Pergamum. At Smyrna, some members are being thrown into prison, while the church is being defamed (Rev 2:9). False apostles and prophets are infiltrating the churches of Ephesus, Pergamum and Thyatira in order to entice members into idolatrous Greco-Roman practices (Rev 2:2, 14-15, 20, 24). At Philadelphia, the church is powerless against a synagogue of Satan (Rev 3:8-9). Spiritually, the church in Sardis tis more dead than alive and needs to wake up (Rev 3:1-3). The church at Laodicea is spiritually lukewarm, arrogantly confident in its wealth and prosperity that it needs nothing (Rev 3:15-16).

Members were experiencing harassment, conflict, and even violence. Churches were targets for defamation and misrepresentation, even as they were in denial and delusion about their own spiritual health. To give these early churches due credit, they were a tiny minority trying to survive in a dominant culture that did not support monotheism, let alone worshipping a person crucified by Rome. This was a society where failure to engage in local religious events, especially Emperor worship, resulted in suspicion and hostility, even arrest, imprisonment and death. 

In this morning’s reading, John lifts the veil to reveal to his readers that despite appearances the empire does not have ultimate power. The true and eternal source of life is the Lord God Almighty, who is, and who was, and who is to come — the Alpha and Omega — the beginning and end of all things. Jesus Christ, the faithful witness and firstborn of the dead, is the true foundation of God’s life-giving reign in this world. 

The amazing good news is that this Christ — the one whom humans crucified but whom God raised up to new life — loves us and affirms each of us as God-created, God-imaged and God-beloved. This Christ frees us from sin — from all the systems, events and persons that deny this truth. The Risen Christ makes of us a kingdom of priests grounded in, embodying, and sharing Christ’s love. 

Like John’s first audiences, we too must daily sift through misinformation and disinformation as well as our own tendencies for denial and delusion to figure out what is really real. To borrow some words from Pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes (“More Real,” April 25, 2025 unfoldinglight.org), the question is:

Who commands your heart [and your feet]?
Despite what pledges you may make, whose voice do you obey?

The demon fear that haunts your inward house but can't create?
The shyster shame that sells you chains for the price of what others think?
The Emperor, who outlaws awe and mercy, who threatens fear and shame,

who promises, if you but obey, a kingdom he doesn't have?

They loom like shadows but they aren't real, they're only shadows.
The Risen One, this love that burns in you, this life that has been given you, 

is more present, more powerful, more real, than they.

Obey the voice that calls you into life,bear witness to this grace, and let the others go.
Whatever pain they cause you will be completely overcome 

by the One who gives you, even out of death, new life that can't be harmed.

Amen. Amen. Let it be so.