Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
April 18, 2004
The Second Sunday of Easter

The Empowered Community
The Rev. Canon Bill Kolb

Gospel: John 20:19-31
(This sermon is also available in audio)

The Body of Christ is the same everywhere; it is just the faces that are different. As Melinda and I take our leave from Calvary for a while, it is this fact that strengthens me. I leave you here but I will find you there.

It is of this community, the Body of Christ, that our Gospel speaks this morning when St. John describes its birth. He tells us of Jesus breathing on his gathered disciples and saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” For we as a worshipping community, and we as a worldwide Church, cannot of our own accord or of our own human abilities, create what we know as the Body of Christ. Only with divine inspiration can we as a whole be more than the sum of parts. And we are more. We are a healing community, for example. We hear, as Jesus commissions the Church, that we are to forgive sins in the name of God. So we are a forgiven community. And to be a forgiven community we have to know that we are in need of forgiveness. And that implies the real possibility of humility, the knowledge that we are sinners but the hope of being redeemed sinners. That makes us different from the world, even though each of us comes from the world, and is mandated to go back out into the world and make it different.

In the powerful movie Glengarry Glen Ross, with Jack Lemon and other great actors, the character played by Alex Baldwin assesses his superiority over the other salesman by saying, “Who am I? Who am I to tell you what to do? I am the man who earned $980,000 last year. How much did you earn? You see this watch on my wrist? This watch cost more than your car, you piece of nothing.”

When I was in my twenties and in the business world, I felt valued primarily according to what I could produce. There were better things about that community, of course. There were friends and births and life itself. But the system seemed to tell all of us that we would produce or be rejected.

The Church is no different, if we keep in mind that it is made up of people. Some of the worst atrocities in history have been committed in the name of God. That continues to this supposedly enlightened day. In the local Church throughout the world there are backbiting, vengeance and all sorts of crimes But the system tells all of us that we are loved and beloved. We may be sinners, but we are redeemed sinners. And not because of anything we do but because God is good. And God operates just as much in the business world as in the Church; it is just that in the Church it is a recognized priority to try to know and do the will of God. It is part of the known and public agenda, even though we fail at it time and again.

You have lived out in my sight your calling as people who know the priesthood of all believers. If ever a Congregation has responded to God’s call to lay ministry, this is it. You minister to each other with power, and you have ministered to me with powerful love. And you are a sign of God with us.

It is in a Church community like this, then, that we are invited to safely experience our own humanity, including the pain of separation and death. It is in this environment that we dare to know ourselves and live into our fears, love, sin, forgiveness and healing.

It was in this Calvary setting that I said goodbye once before, after eight years among you, a time of learning to know and love so many of you. At that time I was aware of the privilege I had had to minister to you. The title of my sermon then was “Reflections on the Care and Feeding of God’s People.”

But on this leaving I want to thank you for ministering to me. You have seen me through the death of my wife of 22 years, through my grieving, through my falling in love and marrying my delight, my bride Melinda. You have walked with me in my sadness and you have openly rejoiced with me in my joy.

I cannot emphasize enough the power of a community of faith. Through this inspired environment ordinary everyday people are empowered to be the means through which the Holy Spirit acts in our lives. Healing, loving, caring goes on between us that would not be possible without the breathing of God’s Spirit into and through us. It is that Spirit which has enabled me to do for you and you to do for me, and which, of our own power (human nature?) we cannot do.

I also want to give thanks to God for the grace and gentleness and generosity of my clergy colleagues George, Andy, Lewis, Mimsy, Bob Hansel, Bob Watson, Bob Bartusch, and Renee Miller. They evoke for me a model for what this worshipping community is and what God calls us to be. I am aware that in this world and in human nature it is not every day that people involved in a common task care enough for each other to be an outpouring of God’s Grace. There was a time, I have to tell you, that our parish clergy were not known in this diocese for collegiality with each other. But in this time with these clergy, I have experienced a depth of kindness and selflessness in word and deed. I have been blessed.

You are in the early months of a new era at Calvary. You are blessed with gifted lay and ordained leaders. The real power of this place is in the people of God, you and you and you. May God continue to bless and keep you, and don’t forget to love the Lord in all the ways that you can. Remember that the glory of God is a human being fully alive…you have made that possible for me and I wish it for each of you.

Amen.

Copyright 2004 Calvary Episcopal Church

Gospel: John 20:19-31
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has
sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to
them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.NRSV

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