Somebody on Facebook copied a cartoon and sent it to all their clergy friends this past Monday. There were two panels in the cartoon. The heading was “Easter Sunday Afternoon”. In one panels there was the scene of an empty tomb, and the words written over above it “Jesus is risen from the dead”. In the panel next to it is a clergy person with a clerical shirt on splayed out on a great big, comfy chair, and the sign above it said, “But the clergy are half dead!” Seems to sum up how we feel after Easter. It is exhilarating, it is exciting, it is full of joy, but it exhausts everyone who is involved in the celebration of it. What does a clergy person do, what do they read, and how do they re-strengthen themselves after the events of Holy Week? Well, in my case, I read chaos theory! Chaos theory is that scientific theory that is defined as following:
Chaos is the science of surprises of the non-linear and unpredictable. It teaches us to expect the unexpected. While most traditional science deals with supposedly predictable phenomena, like gravity, electricity, or chemical reactions, chaos theory deals with non-linear things that are effectively impossible to predict or control, like turbulence, weather, the stock market, our brains’ states, and so on. These phenomena are often described by fractal mathematics, which captures the infinite complexity of nature.
The more I read, the more I realized how absolutely pertinent it is to how we feel after the events of Easter, for this theory sees that there is a pattern even in the midst of chaos, and that the unpredictability of this pattern is hard to define or understand. Chaos theory makes the mathematician and the scientist humble themselves because of its sheer unpredictability and because it is unknowable. But there is within this theory what is known as the butterfly effect. And as I was getting ready for the blessing of the pets this morning, this really caught my eye, because the butterfly effect implies that a butterfly, let’s say somewhere in South America might in fact flap its wings, but later on, much later on, after a cumulative effect of the wing flapping, can be responsible for storms in the North Atlantic, and that the power of one simple thing – and this is chaos theory –can have a multiplying effect and therefore determine something powerful somewhere else.
When I look at the story of Easter, and bask in the glory of all that we did last week, I can’t help but be overwhelmed by the fact that we had the butterfly effect: clearly there was chaos at the time of Jesus’ death and Resurrection. In our passage this morning from the Gospel of John, the disciples gathered in an Upper Room, having been absolutely overwhelmed by the chaos of the events that had preceded it. They felt that their lives were in a chaotic state. We are told in John, and he goes to some detail in his Gospel to tell us, that they locked the room for fear. They were frightened by a number of things: the Jewish authorities, because they knew that they would be accused of stealing a body, and that the stealing of a body was a criminal offense of the highest order. Because the tomb in which Jesus had been laid, the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, was now gone, and his body with it, it would be assumed that someone had taken it from that tomb. They were also terrified of the Romans. After all, they had seen just days earlier Jesus being crucified, they had heard him mocked. They had seen all the misery that had been caused by the power of the Romans, and they were frightened. They were frightened of being associated with Jesus, as they too might suffer a similar fate!
I think they were also frightened because they were out of control. Things had happened beyond their comprehension, their ability to know, the unpredictable, the non-linear – to use chaos theory – had happened, and they were out of control. Isn’t that what happens to all of us when we see that someone we love has died? Do we not feel that for a while everything changes and we are out of control? At the blessing of the pets service this morning, I asked how many remember two dogs that we used to have years ago called Digby and Dexter, the blond and the black American Cocker Spaniels – some of you will remember Digby and Dexter. When Digby died what happened to Dexter? Dexter went into a funk; just laid on a chair. The things that had previously given him joy no longer did. Things that had given him a sense of meaning and purpose no longer did. He was lonely, and scared. He looked for his brother and his brother wasn’t there. It was so sad to watch for Marial and I! We were all out of control!
There is a fascinating article in National Geographic from about a year ago about how in nature grief causes animals to be out of control. It was about grieving whales, “smart and often sociable” the essay says, “whales forged tight bonds with one another.” It is clear that those bonds can be stronger than death itself. More than six species of the marine mammals have been seen clinging to the body of a dead compatriot, probably a pod-mate or a relative. The most likely explanation for the animals’ refusal to let go of the corpse is grief. They are mourning, says the study co-author, Melissa Righetti, a biologist at the University of Milano Bicocca in Italy. They are in pain and stressed. They know that something is wrong, but they can’t define it. Scientists have found a growing number of species from giraffes to chimps that behave as if stricken with grief. Elephants, for example, return again and again to the body of a dead companion. Such findings add to the debate about whether animals feel emotion, and if they do, how such emotions should influence human treatment of other creatures. Clearly, nature has emotions, and the chaos and the change in relationships when someone or something close to you dies is palpable and powerful. Do not underestimate that those disciples in that Upper Room, while they had seen Jesus crucified and saw an empty tomb, were nevertheless still grieving and uncertain. They had no idea what the future would bring. It was unpredictable, and it was terrifying.
Then something happened: Jesus, as the Risen Christ, enters the scene as John tells us, and he stands among them in his risen form, which is mysterious to us, and he vocalizes. He says in Greek, “Eirene (peace be with you)! There is no need to be terrified.” You see, the very thing that they had worried about was that they were alone. There was no hope, no passion, nobody there for them, and they were so stricken that they had no one at their side. Jesus comes into the midst of it all and speaks the words that they needed to hear. They are words of assurance, “Peace be with you.” Jesus had promised this before. In John, Chapter 14, 15, 16 and 17, he talks about his peace being with the disciples, and he says, “Not as the world gives will I give you, but I will give you my peace.” He promised it. But now it is different. Now it is a reality. The very thing that they had hoped for in their misery: Jesus comes to them and he speaks a word of peace. How many people feel in the chaos of uncertainty, violence, or war, the need hear the words, “Peace be with you”?
There was one exception to all this and his name was Thomas. I have said before some years ago, from this pulpit, that I felt that we should never use the phrase “doubting Thomas”. It is a horrible phrase to put on such a person! The reason I say that is because I think Thomas had some valid questions. They are questions that any reasonable person would ask. But I also agree with the assessment of most scholars today that suggest that what Thomas really wanted was to confirm the continuity between the Jesus that he had known and followed as a disciple and the Jesus who is now raised from the dead. He wants to know that he is following the same person that he had followed before. That is why he wants the evidence, the tangible. He needs to see it. “If only I could touch your hands, if only I could see your feet.....I only want to make sure you are the same Lord that I have committed myself to.” After all, he hadn’t been in the room when the door was locked and Jesus appeared. He needed assurance that there was continuity. When he was convinced that there was that continuity, he made one of the greatest statements in all of Christendom: “My Lord and my God!” Thomas knew then that the Jesus who was raised from the dead was the same Jesus who had been crucified on the Cross, the same Jesus that he had followed. You see, what the disciples needed was the assurance of continuity. Jesus had made promises to them, and would keep those promises, and be with them. There was more, there was much more.
Jesus promised to be a living presence for them. This is where you and I enter the story, because what Jesus promised the disciples was the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit. What Jesus promised the disciples is that they would receive another comforter, they would receive another counsellor. The real continuity between Jesus of Nazareth and the Church and us is the power of the Holy Spirit, who comes to us from the Risen Christ. This is the very power of God! This is the very thing that holds the Church together! And while we wait, as did those early Christians, for Pentecost, for the fullness of the Spirit, the manifestations of the power of the Holy Spirit, nevertheless in John, he breathed the Spirit upon them and gave them power to change and to transform the world.
You might say, “How does something so small (and this has been a mystery to me and has been on my mind for a long time), like a group of Jewish fishermen and tax collectors and people like Mary Magdalene and others, how did they influence so much of human history? How did their witness transform so many lives? Chuck Colson, as many of you know, was involved in the Watergate scandal. He wrote books on being a Christian and what it meant, and how being in prison had changed him. Colson made some very good observations. One of them has always stuck with me:
I know the Resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because twelve men testified that they had seen Jesus raised from the dead. Then they proclaim that truth for forty years, never once denying it. Everyone was beaten, tortured, stunned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren’t true. Watergate embroiled twelve of the most powerful men in the world, and they couldn’t keep a lie for three weeks! You are telling me twelve apostles could keep a lie for forty years? Absolutely impossible!
Those who gathered in that Upper Room, those that were met by Christ, were transformed by that. But they were also given – and this is the remarkable thing – tremendous powers: “Whatever you forgive when you forgive someone, then they are forgiven, and what you don’t forgive is not forgiven.” This has been a mystery to me. Was Jesus passing down to the Church hierarchy for generations to come the power to simply forgive sins? No! He is not talking about that. He is saying that they continue his ministry to offer the forgiveness they have found in the Cross. He is simply saying, “You are the continuity through the power of the Holy Spirit of what I have done and what I have offered, and when you offer forgiveness what you are doing is offering me. What you are offering the world is what I have offered the world.” When you think about it, this very morning, Dr. Hunnisett led us all, did she not, in a public Prayer of Confession, and did she not also rise and give us an Assurance of Pardon? The sins are forgiven not because of our decision that someone else should be forgiven, but rather to proclaim the forgiveness that is in Christ.
That is the continuity from the Cross to the Resurrection to the Church today, and I liken it to the butterfly effect, because the butterfly simply moves its wings and yet, in time, storms occur in faraway places. The Christian witness might seem small, but has an effect that can be great. What happened when some Jews gathered in an Upper Room two thousand years ago and were greeted by the Risen Christ has a profound effect two thousand years later. Sometimes, when in the midst of this world you feel insignificant and you feel the chaos of the world, the travails of humanity, the challenges of the earth, and when you think of the challenges that face humanity right now, you say to yourself, “Where are my little wings?” The Chaos Theory teaches us that the movement of a wing can change many things. When Jesus entered the room with those disciples, the wings of the Spirit began to flutter, and the world was changed. Amen.